Although your post is wise, the NDP could go into coalition with the Liberals and form a majority government. But why would the NDP do so? The Liberals stole NDP voters in 2025 because of Trump's entry into the Canadian election. The NDP should stay out of any coalition with the Liberals and bring down the Liberal minority government when it suits the NDP politically.
Arguably, our post-Civil War Reconstruction wasn’t as “brutal” as it could have or should have been, at least in terms of stamping out the KKK and ensuring real suffrage for freed slaves. Read some about what Grant and other post-CW presidents were up against with opposition from both parties to Reconstruction policies.
>> Read some about what Grant and other post-CW presidents were up against with opposition from both parties to Reconstruction policies.
Well, this makes the case for why Reconstruction had to end. There really was nothing more that could have been done without provoking a new insurrection that would have been more savage than the first one, and this time, there would have been little stomach or will in the North to carry on.
I don’t dispute that it had to end at some point, but one can also make the case that more vigorous efforts to suppress the Klan and ensure voting rights for former slaves would have been better in the long term.
Reconstruction was doomed by the economic downturn in 1873-- and Grant's disastrous mishandling of it followed by some noisome scandals. The latter did not touch Grant personally but it nullified public trust in his administration. His political capital was effectively zero thereafter.
Hayes’ bargain with Southern Democrats in the 1876-77 electoral dispute (their support in exchange for withdrawing Federal troops) effectively ended it.
What isn't really taught is the role the Democrats had in dismantling Reconstruction. Today we live in an era when any past racial transgression warrants an endless self-criticism session, and yet the Dems get a pass on this most egregious of historical episodes.
Truthfully, though, today's Democrat party is nothing at all like the Democrat party of the 1870s. The Republicans, on the other hand, are very much like the Republicans of the 19th century, and that's a problem, because today's Republicans frame too much as if we are still in the 19th century.
Yes. As I have written above, Mark Levin and Chris Plante are that stupid. The Republican Party of the South are almost exclusively related to Southern Democrats from the past.
Most southern Democrats of the past have long since become Republicans. Idiot blabbermouths like Mark Levin and Chris Plante haven't figured that out and probably never will.
James, I learned in school that the fallout of the 1876 election was one of the events that ended Reconstruction. If the Democrats hadn't agreed to let the Republicans win the election, do you think that Reconstruction would have continued and had more lasting success?
I suspect that Northern enthusiasm for the Reconstruction was rapidly waning by 1876, and that the bargain between Republican Hayes and the Southern Dems was a convenient off-ramp. My original point was that earlier aggressive actions against insurgents like the Klan and doing more for the freedmen may have led to a better outcome, rather than Jim Crow. My readings about Grant indicate that he was truly concerned about the rights of freed slaves, and had to fight forces within the GOP as well as the expected Southern Democratic opposition. One can only wonder what Lincoln would have done with Reconstruction had he lived.
But that’s all hindsight. As others have said, civil wars are messy, bitter affairs.
James, I'm sure you're presenting this in good faith, but the 'Bargain' of 1877 is just a theory - that has for whatever reason gained widespread acceptance - popularized by Van Woodward. There's no meaningful evidence to actually back it up. It's possible that some agreement was made, but during his presidential election campaign Hayes openly advocated for recalling federal troops from the South.
James, you didn't actually have to live through the Civil War and Reconstruction so it is easy for you to pontificate 150 years later like some sort of Ivy League leftist professor. Lincoln's armies brought wholesale destruction to the South. His war to keep the republic united by FORCE was a destructive endeavor. Lincoln and the Republicans' main purpose for the Civil War was to destroy and impoverish the Southern people that they hated so much.
Derek, since it’s 2025 I don’t think that you lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction either. I will admit that I majored in history with a focus American history, not at an Ivy. And I’m not a leftist, last time I checked. I am continually amazed though that there are those who are still fighting the Civil War 160 years on, and cling to “The Cause” or view it in your terms. TBH, if I had lived at that time, I would have been a Unionist and fought for the preservation of a system of government and nation that I love, and against the institution of slavery, which was a manifest evil and a blight upon our nation. You will never convince me otherwise, and I find it tragic that so many good men on both sides had to be killed to abolish that cruel institution.
I think people who expect people of the long past to live up to modern expectations to be puerile. I was born in 1960 and naturally dislike the concept of slavery. A person born in 1800 in the South lived with the institution of slavery as something natural.
There are a lot of historical figures who wouldn't live up to modern norms. Ancient Greek men were strongly homosexual in orientation. Does that make Socrates, Plato and Aristotle not worth studying because they were likely homosexual? Shakespeare did not believe in democracy. Is it not worth watching his plays? Almost any man or woman born before 1900 didn't believe women had the right to vote. Were they evil? George Orwell was a socialist. Is he not worth reading?
I’ll post one more reply, since I’m up to my eyeballs in work at my hospital, and feel like we’re getting to the beating a dead horse stage. I don’t think it’s puerile to call out the support of an evil practice whether it’s now or 160 years ago, and having studied history I am aware of viewing people’s actions in context to their culture. But chattel slavery was seen as a manifest evil by many people back in the 18th and 19th centuries. The British abolished it before us, to their credit, and abolitionist sentiment existed well before 1861. FWIW I was born in 1959. Southerners back in the mid-1800s may have regarded slavery as “something natural,” but I don’t think that changes the fact that it has been an immoral institution from antiquity. Many ancient civilizations thought that infanticide was natural and acceptable; doesn’t make it less reprehensible.
As for studying historical figures in light of their foibles, well sure…Jefferson wrote our Declaration of Independence, founded UVA, and was a renaissance man. And a slaveholder. One doesn’t have to admire all aspects of a great person’s life to gain some insight from their contributions. Humans are made in imago dei, yet we are all fallen.
Sometimes I think that conservative women should strategically agree to give up the right to vote: because there are enough conservative men to cover for each conservative woman, but there certainly aren't enough liberal men to cover for each liberal woman. (And I'm convinced that most liberal men are just pretending so as to get laid.) Repeal the 19th Amendment, and the Democrats will never win again.
Well, the footprint of an army was still pretty small in the 1860s. The destruction was limited to certain areas.
Lincoln's purpose was to save the Union, and only later on did he add the end of slavery to that. If the war had ended in 1862 there would have been very little destruction-- note that New Orleans, captured by the Union in April of that year, suffered no physical devastation. And I think it's an error to attribute to Lincoln that malicious penal attitudes that animated the Radical Republicans in Congress.
It's foolish in the extreme, Southern arrogance all over again. What won the Civil War? Endless Irish getting off the boats. Not only would our country break down rapidly but there are endless populations to bribe to keep it going till numbers won out.
They voted legally to leave that has nothing to do with arrogance. It was a real issue whether they had a right to do so but obviously it was a legit question if they had to amend the constitution to prevent it after it was over. As we see today we still despise each other so I would argue that long term unity is unlikely to be achieved at the end of a gun.
Yes. If looked at dispassionately I don’t see how it could be anything else. If one wishes to leave something that was voluntarily agreed to and the other commits violence to keep it from happening it’s pretty cut and dried. If slavery had not happened would the consensus be so quick to say that the war was justified? We should have picked our own dam cotton but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have happened anyway. Seems like the north has always viewed the south derisively.
Do you have anything besides feelings (very MAGA, by the way) to support this half-assed hot take? I know, I know, asking for actual evidence is so passé.
Northern arrogance started the Civil War. The South only wanted to be left alone. It was Lincoln who sent Northern men south to go to war with Southern men. Over 600,000 men died, all on "Honest" Abe's account.
The South took all the positive actions which led to the war: secession and then starting the hostilities (at Ft Sumter). If the South wanted to be left alone it could have accepted the election results of 1860 and let things then proceed as they had been. Or maybe even not split the Democratic party in 1860 but rallied behind Stephens instead. The Dred Scott decision affirmed slavery in no uncertain terms. There would have been no war and no upheaval.
I believe in secession is a right. Thus if Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec or Sicily voted for independence, I'd say so long as long as you take your share of the debt with you. I believe in expulsion as well. I'd be for expelling about a dozen current American states, starting with Massachusetts.
Exactly. Nobody wins in a civil war. It's a divorce but even more painful with plenty of violence to go around. And the innocent will always suffer the most.
“This is a historical moment that requires serious men acting seriously.”
Ah, such “seriousness” is overrated—relax. And take a moment to not just type onward, but to breathe and think and actually consider some of the problems that many long-time readers have with the tedious shallowness of your emerging perspective.
So maybe the better way to frame the response is to acknowledge that resetting a seriously off kilter country is complex indeed. And with many issues having reached "urgent" status, addressing them is a HUGE job, both complex and broad.
Living through that will perforce look "chaotic" esp to those with narrow backgrounds. People remember pain more than gain; so-called "emergencies" that begin to settle a bit are not obvious to many.
I did read some good news today indicating that the U.S. has needed much less borrowing than originally forecast in Feb--to the tune of $53-$54B. Good news for bonds whose yields are down from peaks.
Moves in Europe also affect our financial markets. How this will settle should be more apparent by July, imo.
How easily we discount the momentous achievements of shutting down the border, actively countering the evils of DEI and transgenderism, not to mention many other achievements to date, including reducing federal payrolls (at least 121,000 jobs so far), addressing regulations and unleashing the energy industry.
Somehow those specific facts don't make it to the theories of various folks whose opinions (like Betz) are highlighted.
Manufacturing employment (but not manufacturing output which has, overall, kept rising) has been declining in the US for years. This is due to automation. We aren't going back to large armies of men on assembly lines. Those days are as gone as the days of hand-scythed grain and hand-picked cotton.
Please point out where I have put forth any “insult.” I am providing a description of the intellectual problem, not an insult. I respect you the same as usual—it isn’t personal.
Dismissing Rod's comments as "the tedious shallowness of your emerging perspective" is condescending and certainly insulting. Not only to Rod but also to readers, like myself, who find merit in his perspective. Please be courteous even as you disagree.
His emerging perspective is indeed tedious and shallow: that is a description of the perspective, not an insult against the man. Even if you disagree with my assessment, it is still not an insult.
Bingo. After the first couple of sentences, I pretty much knew it was another bash Trump column and skipped to the comments. Trump is certainly not perfect. I don't care much for his bombast either but he is doing a lot of difficult things that need to be done. And he is doing exactly what he promised to do when he campaigned. He was not elected to be the typcial Republican simp who values decorum more than he values doing what is right. I think Rod wants to show his journalist friends that he is fair by being giving honest criticism of his own side. That's fine, but he seems incapable of seeing the many good things Trump does and has become as unfair in his assessments as the MSM. Honestly, he is becoming unreadable.
Rod, I know you’re not a politician, but if you were, Poilievre would distance himself from you and call you a racist, he would distance himself from Bentz and from Arendt and would criticize any conservatives who even met with them. This isn’t speculation, Poilievre really did this to his own party members.
Further, if by some miracle you became president and were calm and steady and wise combatting all the problems you rightly denounce… the entire American, Canadian, European media - very much including The Free Press - would spend all day calling you a chaos agent. That’s what communists do to their enemies, they manufacture lies and propaganda. By now, this late in the game, shouldn’t you be wise and stable enough to stay on course and not submit yet again to the latest commie narrative?
Pierre did exactly what he said he shouldn’t do in his interview with Peterson: He compromised his values to move more to the center, taking the vote of his base for granted.
Pierre alone lost this election.
Canada will suffer as a result of the cowardice of the so-called opposition leaders of Canada.
There is no party anywhere openly stating its opposition to the oligarchic class. And it's that failure to recognize the hour which causes the conservatives to lose everywhere. Trump is more of a celebrity than a genuine reformer, and his party is doing nothing in Congress as if to show their commitment to failing governance. I don't believe there is the stomach for lasting revolt, but I also unfortunately believe the political system is totally compromised and nothing but revolt, collapse, or the Hegemony for as far as the eye can see. It make it hard not to despise even more than the oligarchs the men like Pierre or Speaker Johnson who refuse to reckon with the time.
Canada like the UK and Australia do not have an evangelical voting base. Only chance was to peel off votes from working class.
There is a populist movement. Look at countries like El Salvador Hungary, Argentina etc.
From Canadian contacts, “The issue with Canada is that Ontario and Quebec control the outcome of an election, and the people that live there identify more with snub-nosed European or at best, yankee New Englanders from the U.S. North East than their neighbors down south who they loo! down upon despite being lesser than.
Pierre needed to win in Toronto and/or Montreal. The problem is Toronto is a metropolitan, multicultural cesspool who didn't like him so much as they hated Trudeau, hence the shift back to Carney.
The Bloc screwed up in their home territory - if they had maintained/held seats in Quebec we could've seen a CPC/Bloc minority.
Canada as a whole has a majority left-wing liberal population. Lefties knew this - and consolidated around the Liberals while leaving the NDP to die.
It's true, Marla, Polievere lost his nerve and started taking advice from the pollsters and other credentialed professional politicians. It was sad to watch because even with Trump fogging the waters, I think Poli could have won, though probably only with a minority.
Marla - Try doing some comparative electoral analysis. The number one reason the Left won in Canada yesterday was that people who might have been inclined to vote for the smaller leftist or left-leaning parties, voted instead for the Liberals. The USA's current, idiotic tariff policy (along with Trump's childish trolling) helped consolidate the left and the soft center behind the Liberals. The former were never going to vote for Poilievre and the latter might have been potentially open to the supporting him (though probably not in significant numbers) but the door was closed after Trump went for 'President Man-baby' on Canada.
Vince, l posted a summary of a link. Links and posts do not necessarily reflect my views. I thought this was a thread to post links and commentary etc. There is more to discuss besides blaming Pres. Trump. I never thought Pierre was going to win. I thought he was a horrible candidate with no aspirational message. His campaign ads were atrocious. He fumbled the Peterson interview. Pierre Poilievre was elected to government office at 25 years of age. That's been his only career. Grandstanding. No fighting spirit.
From Canadian contacts, “The issue with Canada is that Ontario and Quebec control the outcome of an election, and the people that live there identify more with snub-nosed European or at best, yankee New Englanders from the U.S. North East than their neighbors down south who they look down upon despite being lesser than.
Pierre needed to win in Toronto and/or Montreal. The problem is Toronto is a metropolitan, multicultural cesspool who didn't like him so much as they hated Trudeau, hence the shift back to Carney.
The Bloc screwed up in their home territory - if they had maintained/held seats in Quebec we could've seen a CPC/Bloc minority.
Canada as a whole has a majority left-wing liberal population. Lefties knew this - and consolidated around the Liberals while leaving the NDP to die.
The problem came less from disaffected Conservatives and more from two small far left parties (NDP and Bloc Québécois) stampeding to the Liberals. The NDP is nearly wiped out.
What I can say, I have zero sympathy for, and will extend zero aid to, Candadians that will soon start fleeing the hell-hole that Canada will become. As far as I am concerned, you ARE NOT WELCOME TO REFUGE in the USA. I don't want you here. You are a weak, cucked out people with zero fight in you. All of you Canadians - ALL OF YOU - have worked, over the past 60 years or so, to bring about the ruin of your country. And I have similar feelings towards Irish and English. This is what I can say, stand and fight.
I wonder if "conservative" Canadians understood that they had zero option to migrate, would we be seeing a different political dynamic up north.
As if... Honestly, have you had a good look at your country lately? Trust me, there's not going to be a mass migration to the States. The Conservatives got more votes in two of the last three federal elections, most of our premiers are Conservative and they won 16 more seats in this election. We'll do fine without you, thanks.
Your concern about the media lying is valid. Of course we shouldn't trust them. And Rod doesn't. But Trump prides himself on his ability to go around the press corps. So I don't need the media to tell me that Donald Trump is a chaos agent who appears to have no plan. That's obvious from his own actions and tweets. I would love to be wrong, but so far, there's little evidence of 4D chess.
His track record on trade also isn't good. Remember the last time Trump went on a "trade renegotiation" bender: NAFTA. After railing against NAFA for years, he negotiated a brand new one all on his own: a landmark agreement; "the best trade agreement our country has ever had." What did he change? Auto parts rules, dairy, some committees to pretend to enforce labor laws... small potatoes.
Trump is as performative as the progressives. And Rod's right, with the problems we have going on right now, we need something more than performance.
Chaos agent, yes, more specifically, keeping foes guessing and off balance. Which is a viable strategy.
"Appears to have no plan," only if you put stock in appearance...or more to the point, the framing of such appearance by his opponents.
We are just over three months into this. Takes more than that to see the unfolding of any strategy of this sort.
His track record has earned patience. If aesthetics are mainly your thing, well, I'm afraid you are out of luck, and the Miss Manners approach sailed long ago. Those kinds would get eaten alive now. See Mike Pence.
Respectfully, you can’t say he has no plan if you make no effort to listen to his team carefully and cogently explain the plan. The best interviews of the year are the ones the All In Pod did with his cabinet secretaries. This one, with Lutnick, is fascinating for the 9/11 angle alone but then there’s lots of plan detailing:
As for other issues and “chaos,” the right has been wailing for years and years about illegal immigration, leftist universities, global warming hysteria, affirmative action/dei, government waste, transgenderism, etc. In just 3 months Trump has been doing everything humanly possible on all those fronts, what is not to love? Should he just pick one issue at a time, go nice and slow, to avoid too much chaos? Should he give up every time a crazy judge hides illegals and not fight back? In what world can accomplishing all these goals quickly and efficiently be seen as peaceful and calm? I don’t get it.
Classic movie recommendation: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Understand your enemy and don’t be bound by fake civility.
One final remark, about you saying Rod doesn’t trust the media. Well, it’s like Michael Chrichton’s famous remark about the newspapers. Rod has absolutely zero trust in the media when it reports on issues he cares about - like Christianity, or Hungary. But when it reports on economics - which rod admits he doesn’t understand well - he seems to buy their premises. That’s an odd way to approach things in my view…
The chaos I'm talking about is economic. I support the rest. Progressives screaming about DEI is music to my ears. But Rod said it best: screwing up the economy will derail the rest of the agenda. Changes to economic policy need to be handled slowly so that private actors have time to adapt.
What does that look like: "We will be implementing a 5% global tariff on all imports starting March 1, and that will increase to 10% at the end of 2025." And stick to it. Ian Fletcher laid out a really solid industrial policy case for such a policy more than 15 years ago in Free Trade Doesn't Work. Oren Cass has a great piece today on how that could still be done: https://www.understandingamerica.co/p/trump-should-go-on-offense-against But that would require Trump to drive legislation through Congress, something he's not proven capable of doing yet. JD Vance might be able to though.
Everything else should have been within the first 100 days, but turning an economy as large as America takes time. You can do it faster, but it entails massive disruption and either a recession of huge deficit spending, the former of whicih will derail your agenda and the latter we can't afford.
Poilievre is a coward. Had he the intellectual scope to know who Rod Dreher is, he would condemn him. Poilievre is an enemy of Mark Steyn. Poilievre is Canada's Mitt Romney.
The things is: A good chunk of MAGA is looking for a savior and they think politics, and Trump, is the answer. This is the post Christian world. People filling the God shaped whole with little men.
I would say many, if not most, of MAGA ARE Christians, and quite aware of who the Savior actually is. Trump is not Jesus. Just a president they trust to do some things this nation really needs.
People who say they are Christians or folks who have completely put their trust in Christ as the King of the Universe? You can judge a tree by its fruits.
You certainly can. Also, a Christian is a person who has accepted the gift of salvation from Christ. That does not make them that second a saint. For most, the growth comes slowly and painfully over many years, sometimes with long periods of stalls, halts and "time in the dessert."
I’m not sure what you think the answers are at this point but to work through the politics of it. Just continue being a doormat? The alternative is to turn it into a hot war. I would think most do understand it’s not going to solve everything or fill a spiritual hole but this is the best we can do with the opportunity we’ve been afforded.
I'm supposed to believe that Trump caused the Canada election outcome, but the leader of the Conservatives in Canada couldn't even win his own seat - one he's held for 20 years!
Sorry, I'm not buying that this is Trump's fault. Sounds like Canada's conservatives need to get themselves figured out.
There are no conservatives in Canada, or in the rest of the Commonwealth for that matter, the way the term is understood in America. These places have a deep desire for Socialist rule. That's why Trump treats them the way he does. The overwhelming zeitgeist among Western Elites is to "wait Trump out". Trump is necessary, but not sufficient--his stance vis-a-vis the rest of the world will need continuity. These four years is just the beginning of hope, and if the American Left wins in '28, Rod's fear of the West's collapse will be assured.
Well please tell us what the hell is going on up there. Both parties are cucked out to the gills, there is a mana for race displacement that will see native Canadians a permanent minority within a generation, replaced by a people that have a track record of corruption, brutality and cynicism, and to what good effect. Not a peep of resistance from Canadians, but thank heavens you aren't racist, boy, that would be unpardonable. And this is just start. The economy is suffocated with regulation, crushing wages and creating an unbearable housing shortage. So, what the hell is going on up there. Tell us.
Six months ago your country had a hamburger-brained dementia patient as your President and a Maoist wine-mom running to replace him and the wine-mom nearly won. All over the West, a globalist, technocratic credentialed class who despises their fellow citizens runs a managerial state that is very difficult to knock out of place, as Trump is finding out right now. Carney and Trudeau and the Clintons and Obamas do not represent the will of their people. And Trump, in his stupidity and greed, decided to go for the W by backing the globalist class in the Canadian election instead of trying to build common cause and resistance. Which is why we never win and THEY do.
Agreed but honestly we don’t know what his motivation was, I don’t believe he is that obtuse. He understands public perception quite well and uses it to his advantage.
LOL - Trump is ALWAYS playing 4-D chess to his supporters Yes, the guy who slathers himself in bronzer each morning is a deep, strategic and reflective thinker.
Sounds like the Tories in the UK. I’m not a fan of trolling for trolling’s sake, but if a party’s leader can’t even win his own district, that party is WEAK SAUCE.
To be fair to Poilievre, his Carlton district outside of Ottawa was similar to a Northern Virginia congressional district in modern day America. In 1980, Republicans swept both Northern Virginia districts. Today, Northern Virginia has three districts that are strongly Democratic. Big Government creates lefty parasites.
This is Trump’s fault and remains so regardless of you jamming your head into your fourth point of contact.
Trump gave a lifeline to the Liberals intentionally and deliberately. Trump is at heart a Leftist - really a Peronist. And just as Juan Peron made Argentina not-so-great through his quasi Left Nationalist economic policy, so will Trump lead us to our third world future.
There's no way to disprove an assertion about the inner workings of Trump's mind.
I don't think I can convince you that I'm not a Trump cultist. At this point I've forgotten why I thought you were mentally unstable, and I'm indeed too lazy to dig back for my reasons.
Pierre's riding (Carleton) has long been a conservative one. Guess what? The riding was recently gerrymandered. It was enlarged to absorb the neighboring riding of Kanata, which is extremely liberal and contains many zero generation immigrants who vote Liberal (or farther left NDP). Question is why didn't he get parachuted into a riding he could do better in.
I voted for Trump, but I have no illusions that he’s basically a bumbling egomaniac who lives in an alternate reality. He’s preferable to the alternative, but I don’t have any confidence that he’s going to fix any long term problems, except for the border he absolutely fixed that.
Same here. I voted for him, thinking "Well, we'll have to deal with his foolishness for 4 years, but that's better than the Democrats." I hope we can get through his presidency without too much damage being done, but we'll see.
"If you think we have dodged the totalitarian bullet in the US, you are mistaken."
Indeed.
Though there is another possibility: The Directorate. Of course, that led to Napoleon, so YMMV.
"The Right now has political power in America, but it won’t hold on to it if it makes the lives of ordinary Americans worse. "
And a good test will be how the "Right" responds when enough ordinary Americans are fed up and attempt to turf it out. Given how Trump and his minions have so far responded, with fond wishes to deport US citizens to Ecuador [edit: I meant El Salvador], Bondi not ruling out arresting Supreme Court justices, Trump railing against Amazon for daring to post his own tariff charges, there is more than a whiff of suggestion that peaceful transfers of power are a diminishing likelihood.
Nope. Look at Trump's own remarks to the Prez of El Salvador on his visit a couple of weeks ago. He was half-joking about extraditing "home-growns" - this was thought to be black humor at first, then the very next day Trump's own mouthpieces were actually saying they were looking into the legality of doing exactly this. These are things no US president should say even in jest, much less be taken seriously, and the sorts of things only authoritarians in other countries have done in the past.
He’s not a politician. Your griping about statements. I’m sorry but this constant fear mongering after we already had him in power for 4 years seems over the top and a little tiresome; 5 years of -he’s going to start wwiii, he’s going to ‘imprison journalists’, he’s going to prosecute his enemies (this I would support after all their shenanigans) he’s going to become a dictator- is an ongoing chorus...
"He's not a politician" is just excuse making at this point, and flatly untrue to boot. He runs the Republican party. He is the President. These are definitionally politician things.
And yes we had him running things for 4 years - over 4 years ago. That first term he was surrounded by people who told him "no" when he was off-base. He fired them. Now he only has yes-men minions. It's not the same show.
I have an interesting thought experiment: you have $100,000 to invest between now and 2030. Would you put that in the S&P 500, or buy guns/food/gold for the coming civil war? 90% of the people reading this, me included, would put that money in the market. Think about it.
Excellent question, I was thinking of something similar…if you lived on the east coast in the I-95 corridor between Philadelphia and Baltimore, would you move? If so where?
We continue to leave money in the market, but did buy some gold before it went wild just in case things get weird for a little while and you need to trade for flour and half a cow..
So….. bullion is fungible anywhere. If civil war happens then ammo and whiskey will be currency. Freeze dried food is good for 25 years. A little bit off this and that make a balanced approach.
I feel for young families. Dads will be more important than ever. So will be good and trustworthy friends and a true church family. Live not by lies.
I'd put most of it in the market, meaning I do not think everything is falling apart. Any more than most other tumultuous periods this nation has been through. I wouldn't put all of it, however.
About 80 percent in the fund. 20 percent in ammo/survival food, spare parts for my main vehicle and whiskey. Not gold. Gold is useless in a survival situation.
The America empire has been on a path to failure for a long time. It should have never been born, as Americans make poor imperialists and hegemons. Instead of going back to be a normal but powerful nation in 1991, we took over the world.
This was destructive to the country. Our politicians and business folks looked globally. They encouraged the exporting of every job possible and then brought in immigrants for many jobs they couldn't export. American way of life has declined compared to the rest of the world.
This system was doomed to failure and collapse. It almost collapsed during the Cold War, but Reagan brought it back for a short time.
The Great Recession was really just a beginning. It was a failure before Biden brought in millions.
Trump is wrestling with the beast. The rest of the world and much of the powerful in America want him to fail. If Trump fails, collapse is more likely.
If Trump can kill the American empire without killing America, life in America should improve.
It has been unpleasant, at times, for me to come to this understanding--"what if we're the baddies"--given my views of several decades until not so many years ago. One milestone: reading The Quiet American, published in 1955 but germinating since 1951. I couldn't believe it: it was all there, embodied in that one character, in the 1950s. And we kept going down that road, and we still do.
I am a fan of many Graham Greene novels (particularly The End of the Affair). However, the idea that some novel (!!!) by a British leftist, who as he got older became an embarrassing apologist for the USSR, is a Q source for analyzing postwar US foreign policy is such a laughable take.
Congrats to the 7 people who liked the above post. THE NATION would like to offer you guys complementary subscriptions.
Clinton was pretty circumspect in the 90s, the real troubles began with 9/11 and our response to it. Similar to the Covid panic, our reaction was more deadly than the event itself.
Of course, Clinton could be considered the least serious of our presidents since Carter (though he was a serious man/thinker). Maybe we need less serious presidents.
Clinton was not bad, but still did too much -- Black Hawk Down, Bosnia, no fly zone in Iraq, being too much.
Clinton administration worldview was expansion of American power, a continuation of GHWB. We expanded bases around the world. 9/11 juiced everything, but it was largely a continuation since 1989.
TBH, in hindsight I think basically every President we’ve had since the first Bush has to be in the running for “Worst Ten Presidents in History”. I will conditionally exclude Trump from that on the condition that he succeeds in what he’s trying to do. Jury’s out. But W? Clinton? Biden? They were all awful and bear enormous amounts of responsibility for almost the whole panoply of crises we’re confronting today. Even Obama was a mediocre President at best, though at least his crime is mainly representing a gigantic missed opportunity despite some significant mistakes (like Libya).
They all went along with empire and oligarchy, independent of party. They all sold out America and Americans for power and money.
Bush 1 was never Reagan and dumped all the Reagan folks to bring in the "right" people. We now know he fought avoidable wars to benefit empire. Breaking his "read my lips, no new taxes" killed off a lot of Republican Party support.
Clinton mostly continued Bush policies and continued to sell out America. Bill might have been the best pure politician of the bunch.
Bush 2 took a crisis and made it all worse. And his domestic efforts like No Child Left Behind hurt the kids. He watched as the economy collapsed, just like he kept reading the book after the 9/11 attack.
Obama had potential, but then just let the party and Wall Street do what they wanted, and let Hillary go full neocon on the world. His contempt for the rule of law pushed things down.
Trump 1 was doing pretty good, in spite of nonstop opposition, until Covid. He didn't get what it was and how his people used Covid against him.
Biden was the worst president of my lifetime, worse even than Carter.....
Jon, you know that both the French and the UK official empires were much bigger, that America largely stayed out of the game of empire in Africa. It had one new terroritory in Asia, a result of the Spanish-American War. Russia and Germany were also "world powers" much more so than America. It is ridiculous to compare 1900 America with 1945 American empire or today's global American hegemony.
America, even as late as the 60s, had very few imports.
My point was that American imperialism began before any of us, or our parents, were born. Yes, it was WWII that juiced it, but it was a pre-existing condition.
George Friedman's interview with Tucker Carlson last week echoes your points.
The U.S. progressive trend, begun over 100 years ago, has not been a success. We aren't naturally a people receptive to imperial power, and heck, we don't need it given the blessings of our geography and resources.
Do we not also need wise, steady conservative punditry? All this civil war talk is at least as reckless as any trolling Trump has done about making Canada the 51st state.
Did you listen to David Betz? He studies this stuff for a living. I think it is much more likely in the UK/Europe than in the US. Listen to him, then come back to me.
I will say it: Betz is wrong. The danger (and it's a damn severe one too) is WWIII among powers. And that, by the way, is how nations prevent civil war: by directing political hatreds outward. When our actual Civil War ended there were voices urging to a war with Britain (over Canada) as a quickie way to reunify the nation. Hitler and Napoleon both unified their polities by outward aggression.
Southern boys weren’t signing up to fight for a country that had killed their fathers and brothers and impoverished their mothers. I had not heard that and I believe you but that was a fools dream.
Neither Andrew Johnson nor Grant had any desire to go that route. But the British took the threat seriously which is why they spun off Canada as a separate Dominion.
The Spanish American War did involve Southerners fighting with and for those damn Yankeees and that was even celebrated as a war of national unity.
You have a point, Jon. When the Yankees stopped waving the bloody shirt in the 1890s, the South became more united with their Yankee brothers thus all the Southerners who fought in America's ridiculous war with Spain. In his restrained way, William McKinley helped North-South reconciliation. It helped that he was a brave Yankee soldier who honored his Southern opponents.
This is a good point. The issue is whether Rod and his friend David Brooks are more like Chicken Little or Cassandra. Rod’s reliance on “experts” calls to mind a maxim from my old Socialist days, attributed to Marx, if I recall correctly, “when the train of history rounds a bend, the intellectuals fall off.”
We escaped the true end of it all by the skin of our teeth in the Cuban Missile Crisis and I just hope the next time we are lucky enough to have another Deputy Brigade Commander Vasili Arkhipov.
What, who is Vasili Arkhipov? Read this. Dr. Stanciu is a brilliant writer.
Betz lives in an Ivory Tower. As long as the pensions are paid, the cops are paid, the national health services provide a limited service and people get six weeks of vacation, Europeans will obey their masters. Only when that breaks, there might be revolution.
I just find it difficult for someone to claim this when he’s had so much success outside of his real estate business. He didn’t just stumble onto his success
I agree with Betz's analysis. But Democrats are far far more likely to provoke a civil war than Trump. They have no respect for free and fair elections. They oppose reforms to unrig and defraud elections. They still support invaders. Etc. Etc. And their rhetoric practically asks for insurrection.
On Canada, there already was an Alberta separatist movement. When Canada goes further down the toilet (Yes, I said "when."), that movement will become stronger.
I've found it troubling that I can no longer engage in discussion with some people about Trump's tariff's (and some other shortcomings that have occurred in his first 100 days). It reminds me of when I used to speak with people who had gotten aboard the Woke Train a number of years ago. If I express my concern, or make a simple argument, I'm met with contempt, or my argument is simply shut down so no further discussion can take place. It's as though the pendulum has swung (quite quickly) way in the other direction.
The issue is that people are living in different basic movies of reality: the differences are at close to an axiomatic level, deeper than any “argument.” You’re a Mormon, so you probably get that—some folk you can talk to, some you can’t. I don’t have “contempt” for those who have a different view, but I do believe that arguing over it is a waste of time.
For people who want a little protectionism, myself included, there is no way to see how this goes other than to see it played out.
My understanding, as in what I voted for, is for Trump to negotiate a change in world trade. We know Trump's attitude is ask for 200% and complain when he gets 80% of it but still settle. In this case Trump is going to ask for 200% but he will likely get much less than the rule of thumb.
You and Rod and others want a discussion in the middle of that process. Anyone who voted for the idea that Trump will figure it out is going to say, let the man try. He's in the middle of trying. Once there is a status quo at the end, that is what I am looking to discuss.
Additionally, a few years ago I made a decision that I was not going to lose sleep over what Trump did day to day. That plays into it too.
Trump is a reaction to the problems of Mass Media, in my opinion. That is the more interesting question to me, was Trump inevitable and how can we do better so that we don't need to go with someone who fights fire with fire?
This is the shortsightedness that really bothers me. Rod and I want to have a discussion in the middle of the process? You better believe it, and so do many, many concerned people. Lots of people who voted for Trump didn't vote for what's been going on with the tariffs.
Here's a comment I posted on another thread in response to someone who said we shouldn't be bothered by the "little bit of pain" that the tariffs may inflict on some of us (another person told me to shut up because don't I know that eggs need to be cracked in order to make an omlette):
I grow real tired of people saying that the tariffs, if left as is, will just cause a little "pain"
that people just need to shut up and accept. It's a luxury belief told by people who are very fortunate not to experience the pain.
This afternoon I looked at projections for my small business and determined that if the tariffs stick, not only will I not be hiring a new employee, like I planned a couple months ago, but I will be laying some people off. That means good people won't be providing for their families and will lose their health insurance and other benefits. We'll likely raise our costs, too, which will be passed onto consumers. Ah, you say, but this is just a little pain we all have to bear. Try telling that to people who find themselves out of work.
I have a friend who owns a trucking business. In May, he plans on laying off truckers, who I presume are largely Trump supporters. Why? Because west coast ports are going to have 50-60% less goods to deliver. Shipping is already down 30% this week. Do you think the truckers will simply accept the "pain"?
Another small business owner I know is a mom and pop retail business. He told me his margins are already tight and he won't survive the "pain" caused by the tariffs.
Another friend works for a big charity. He said that charitable giving has sharply declined and stocks and mutual funds, which make up a large part of the charity's principle income pool, has tanked, which means less money being granted to needy families and kids.
I could go on and on. If you want to know about the pain, go attend your local chamber of commerce meeting. People are rightfully scared for their businesses, their employees, and their families. There can be economic change in this country without chaos and self inflicted harm. If we keep going down this rode, though, lots of innocent people will be hurt, and it will be the Trump administration that will be blamed. Be prepared for someone from the hard left to take the reins of power.
[In sum, I, and many others, cannot sit idly by and not ask tough questions during the "middle of the process" when we are likely to experience severe hardship]
I'm sorry that you are in a tough place. You write about particular troubles that cannot be delayed too long.
Personally I hope this is resolved well enough within a short time period, weeks would be best, so that people can have stability again. If it's not weeks or a few months it will probably have to be abandoned for the reasons you outline.
The debt, the trade deficits, and leaning too hard on the dollar as the reserve currency are all long term issues that conservatives have raised time and again. If something can be done we need it done.
The news cycle is too fast. I would rather see criticism of Trump issues on a pace of weekly updates rather than the daily panic, daily details of how the sausage is made and the daily panic comments. Presidents used to go to Camp David and work on a problem for a stretch of time. Disappearing is not Trump's style but I think Trump should have that same room to work.
I'll keep you and the other business owners who comment here in my prayers when I pray for America.
I sympathize and perhaps it could be done with a surgeons knife? I don’t know however the blame should be placed where it actually belongs; the politicians who didn’t strangle globalization in its crib. We don’t make much of anything anymore and if a perfect storm happened we would be in a world of hurt.
Also similar to trying to tell people that invading Iraq was a bad idea, or that we were executing the war there poorly. I think it is more concerned with "loyalty" and which group you belong to than any pendulums.
Interesting! Thanks for posting that article.
Although your post is wise, the NDP could go into coalition with the Liberals and form a majority government. But why would the NDP do so? The Liberals stole NDP voters in 2025 because of Trump's entry into the Canadian election. The NDP should stay out of any coalition with the Liberals and bring down the Liberal minority government when it suits the NDP politically.
I thought the NDP only got one seat.
It appears they have won 7 seats. A far cry from the 24 they won the last election.
Yes I would never have really understood this, I don’t understand well other political systems they seem inefficient and self defeating.
Well we had that too prior to...2016 I think?
Reconstruction was also pretty brutal; don’t think we’ve been taught enough about that.
People grew their own food then. Cities were more self-sufficient.
Arguably, our post-Civil War Reconstruction wasn’t as “brutal” as it could have or should have been, at least in terms of stamping out the KKK and ensuring real suffrage for freed slaves. Read some about what Grant and other post-CW presidents were up against with opposition from both parties to Reconstruction policies.
>> Read some about what Grant and other post-CW presidents were up against with opposition from both parties to Reconstruction policies.
Well, this makes the case for why Reconstruction had to end. There really was nothing more that could have been done without provoking a new insurrection that would have been more savage than the first one, and this time, there would have been little stomach or will in the North to carry on.
I don’t dispute that it had to end at some point, but one can also make the case that more vigorous efforts to suppress the Klan and ensure voting rights for former slaves would have been better in the long term.
Reconstruction was doomed by the economic downturn in 1873-- and Grant's disastrous mishandling of it followed by some noisome scandals. The latter did not touch Grant personally but it nullified public trust in his administration. His political capital was effectively zero thereafter.
Hayes’ bargain with Southern Democrats in the 1876-77 electoral dispute (their support in exchange for withdrawing Federal troops) effectively ended it.
The South was in no position to mount a new insurrection. Klan terrorism was about the most they could do.
What isn't really taught is the role the Democrats had in dismantling Reconstruction. Today we live in an era when any past racial transgression warrants an endless self-criticism session, and yet the Dems get a pass on this most egregious of historical episodes.
Truthfully, though, today's Democrat party is nothing at all like the Democrat party of the 1870s. The Republicans, on the other hand, are very much like the Republicans of the 19th century, and that's a problem, because today's Republicans frame too much as if we are still in the 19th century.
Yes. As I have written above, Mark Levin and Chris Plante are that stupid. The Republican Party of the South are almost exclusively related to Southern Democrats from the past.
Most southern Democrats of the past have long since become Republicans. Idiot blabbermouths like Mark Levin and Chris Plante haven't figured that out and probably never will.
Thanks for giving us the Dinesh D'souza angle on this, Paul. Provides some really AMAZING insight.
Aw, shucks, but I really can't take any credit. That would go to eminent historian Eric Foner.
https://www.amazon.com/Reconstruction-Updated-Unfinished-Revolution-1863-1877/dp/0062354515
Exactly, shouldn’t the Dem Party be cancelled due to their support of slavery, the Klan and Jim Crow?
James, I learned in school that the fallout of the 1876 election was one of the events that ended Reconstruction. If the Democrats hadn't agreed to let the Republicans win the election, do you think that Reconstruction would have continued and had more lasting success?
I suspect that Northern enthusiasm for the Reconstruction was rapidly waning by 1876, and that the bargain between Republican Hayes and the Southern Dems was a convenient off-ramp. My original point was that earlier aggressive actions against insurgents like the Klan and doing more for the freedmen may have led to a better outcome, rather than Jim Crow. My readings about Grant indicate that he was truly concerned about the rights of freed slaves, and had to fight forces within the GOP as well as the expected Southern Democratic opposition. One can only wonder what Lincoln would have done with Reconstruction had he lived.
But that’s all hindsight. As others have said, civil wars are messy, bitter affairs.
James, I'm sure you're presenting this in good faith, but the 'Bargain' of 1877 is just a theory - that has for whatever reason gained widespread acceptance - popularized by Van Woodward. There's no meaningful evidence to actually back it up. It's possible that some agreement was made, but during his presidential election campaign Hayes openly advocated for recalling federal troops from the South.
No. The white Yankee Republicans, except for a few Massachusetts liberals, were tired of the freedmen.
Arguably 😒
James, you didn't actually have to live through the Civil War and Reconstruction so it is easy for you to pontificate 150 years later like some sort of Ivy League leftist professor. Lincoln's armies brought wholesale destruction to the South. His war to keep the republic united by FORCE was a destructive endeavor. Lincoln and the Republicans' main purpose for the Civil War was to destroy and impoverish the Southern people that they hated so much.
Derek, since it’s 2025 I don’t think that you lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction either. I will admit that I majored in history with a focus American history, not at an Ivy. And I’m not a leftist, last time I checked. I am continually amazed though that there are those who are still fighting the Civil War 160 years on, and cling to “The Cause” or view it in your terms. TBH, if I had lived at that time, I would have been a Unionist and fought for the preservation of a system of government and nation that I love, and against the institution of slavery, which was a manifest evil and a blight upon our nation. You will never convince me otherwise, and I find it tragic that so many good men on both sides had to be killed to abolish that cruel institution.
I think people who expect people of the long past to live up to modern expectations to be puerile. I was born in 1960 and naturally dislike the concept of slavery. A person born in 1800 in the South lived with the institution of slavery as something natural.
There are a lot of historical figures who wouldn't live up to modern norms. Ancient Greek men were strongly homosexual in orientation. Does that make Socrates, Plato and Aristotle not worth studying because they were likely homosexual? Shakespeare did not believe in democracy. Is it not worth watching his plays? Almost any man or woman born before 1900 didn't believe women had the right to vote. Were they evil? George Orwell was a socialist. Is he not worth reading?
I’ll post one more reply, since I’m up to my eyeballs in work at my hospital, and feel like we’re getting to the beating a dead horse stage. I don’t think it’s puerile to call out the support of an evil practice whether it’s now or 160 years ago, and having studied history I am aware of viewing people’s actions in context to their culture. But chattel slavery was seen as a manifest evil by many people back in the 18th and 19th centuries. The British abolished it before us, to their credit, and abolitionist sentiment existed well before 1861. FWIW I was born in 1959. Southerners back in the mid-1800s may have regarded slavery as “something natural,” but I don’t think that changes the fact that it has been an immoral institution from antiquity. Many ancient civilizations thought that infanticide was natural and acceptable; doesn’t make it less reprehensible.
As for studying historical figures in light of their foibles, well sure…Jefferson wrote our Declaration of Independence, founded UVA, and was a renaissance man. And a slaveholder. One doesn’t have to admire all aspects of a great person’s life to gain some insight from their contributions. Humans are made in imago dei, yet we are all fallen.
Sometimes I think that conservative women should strategically agree to give up the right to vote: because there are enough conservative men to cover for each conservative woman, but there certainly aren't enough liberal men to cover for each liberal woman. (And I'm convinced that most liberal men are just pretending so as to get laid.) Repeal the 19th Amendment, and the Democrats will never win again.
Well, the footprint of an army was still pretty small in the 1860s. The destruction was limited to certain areas.
Lincoln's purpose was to save the Union, and only later on did he add the end of slavery to that. If the war had ended in 1862 there would have been very little destruction-- note that New Orleans, captured by the Union in April of that year, suffered no physical devastation. And I think it's an error to attribute to Lincoln that malicious penal attitudes that animated the Radical Republicans in Congress.
It's foolish in the extreme, Southern arrogance all over again. What won the Civil War? Endless Irish getting off the boats. Not only would our country break down rapidly but there are endless populations to bribe to keep it going till numbers won out.
They voted legally to leave that has nothing to do with arrogance. It was a real issue whether they had a right to do so but obviously it was a legit question if they had to amend the constitution to prevent it after it was over. As we see today we still despise each other so I would argue that long term unity is unlikely to be achieved at the end of a gun.
“The War of Northern Aggression?”
Yes. If looked at dispassionately I don’t see how it could be anything else. If one wishes to leave something that was voluntarily agreed to and the other commits violence to keep it from happening it’s pretty cut and dried. If slavery had not happened would the consensus be so quick to say that the war was justified? We should have picked our own dam cotton but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have happened anyway. Seems like the north has always viewed the south derisively.
Kat -
Do you have anything besides feelings (very MAGA, by the way) to support this half-assed hot take? I know, I know, asking for actual evidence is so passé.
Northern arrogance started the Civil War. The South only wanted to be left alone. It was Lincoln who sent Northern men south to go to war with Southern men. Over 600,000 men died, all on "Honest" Abe's account.
The South took all the positive actions which led to the war: secession and then starting the hostilities (at Ft Sumter). If the South wanted to be left alone it could have accepted the election results of 1860 and let things then proceed as they had been. Or maybe even not split the Democratic party in 1860 but rallied behind Stephens instead. The Dred Scott decision affirmed slavery in no uncertain terms. There would have been no war and no upheaval.
Exactly. Who literally fired the first shots?
The Dred Scott SCOTUS majority were all Democrats.
Ah, Derek is channeling his inner Thomas DiLorenzo.
"The South only wanted to be left alone." From what exactly? Electoral outcomes that were not to their liking? That's very 2020 of you, Derek.
I believe in secession is a right. Thus if Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec or Sicily voted for independence, I'd say so long as long as you take your share of the debt with you. I believe in expulsion as well. I'd be for expelling about a dozen current American states, starting with Massachusetts.
Exactly. Nobody wins in a civil war. It's a divorce but even more painful with plenty of violence to go around. And the innocent will always suffer the most.
Please, no civil war folks. Normal citizens are mostly similar . We all want peace and prosperity.
We are already in one it just hasn’t turned hot yet.
“This is a historical moment that requires serious men acting seriously.”
Ah, such “seriousness” is overrated—relax. And take a moment to not just type onward, but to breathe and think and actually consider some of the problems that many long-time readers have with the tedious shallowness of your emerging perspective.
Pausing while I dig around for those historical moments not requiring serious men to act seriously. Hold on, will be with you in a minute...
Processing, processing! . . .
So maybe the better way to frame the response is to acknowledge that resetting a seriously off kilter country is complex indeed. And with many issues having reached "urgent" status, addressing them is a HUGE job, both complex and broad.
Living through that will perforce look "chaotic" esp to those with narrow backgrounds. People remember pain more than gain; so-called "emergencies" that begin to settle a bit are not obvious to many.
I did read some good news today indicating that the U.S. has needed much less borrowing than originally forecast in Feb--to the tune of $53-$54B. Good news for bonds whose yields are down from peaks.
Moves in Europe also affect our financial markets. How this will settle should be more apparent by July, imo.
How easily we discount the momentous achievements of shutting down the border, actively countering the evils of DEI and transgenderism, not to mention many other achievements to date, including reducing federal payrolls (at least 121,000 jobs so far), addressing regulations and unleashing the energy industry.
Somehow those specific facts don't make it to the theories of various folks whose opinions (like Betz) are highlighted.
And a bit more good news that I suspect most have not read:
1)345,000 new jobs since inauguration, including 9000 manufacturing jobs. The 345K is 100K higher than predicted by economists.
Note that in the last 2 years of Biden's tenure, manufacturing jobs declined by 6K each month.
2)5.2 T in new investments pledged
3) Inflation below expectations, at 2.4% far below the peak during Biden admin.
The point is what you read...if you are reading the NYT and listening to MSM you won't hear anything but the same tune of Trump bad...
All good to hear, but I await that 5 T pledged to become invested and actualized.
Trump is pugilistic, but I'm willing to wait and see.
Yes it won't happen overnight. OTOH, the investments are from a range of companies with some big incentives to invest here.
Manufacturing employment (but not manufacturing output which has, overall, kept rising) has been declining in the US for years. This is due to automation. We aren't going back to large armies of men on assembly lines. Those days are as gone as the days of hand-scythed grain and hand-picked cotton.
If I saw bread that said "hand-scythed" on the label, I would probably buy it.
I read about that in the WSJ. Mostly things planned before Trump.
Insults are not a meaningful rebuttal. Do better.
Please point out where I have put forth any “insult.” I am providing a description of the intellectual problem, not an insult. I respect you the same as usual—it isn’t personal.
Dismissing Rod's comments as "the tedious shallowness of your emerging perspective" is condescending and certainly insulting. Not only to Rod but also to readers, like myself, who find merit in his perspective. Please be courteous even as you disagree.
His emerging perspective is indeed tedious and shallow: that is a description of the perspective, not an insult against the man. Even if you disagree with my assessment, it is still not an insult.
Typical MAGA who can’t stand to hear any criticism of Trump.
Not true. I am merely bored with tedious and shallow criticisms.
Bingo. After the first couple of sentences, I pretty much knew it was another bash Trump column and skipped to the comments. Trump is certainly not perfect. I don't care much for his bombast either but he is doing a lot of difficult things that need to be done. And he is doing exactly what he promised to do when he campaigned. He was not elected to be the typcial Republican simp who values decorum more than he values doing what is right. I think Rod wants to show his journalist friends that he is fair by being giving honest criticism of his own side. That's fine, but he seems incapable of seeing the many good things Trump does and has become as unfair in his assessments as the MSM. Honestly, he is becoming unreadable.
Rod, I know you’re not a politician, but if you were, Poilievre would distance himself from you and call you a racist, he would distance himself from Bentz and from Arendt and would criticize any conservatives who even met with them. This isn’t speculation, Poilievre really did this to his own party members.
Further, if by some miracle you became president and were calm and steady and wise combatting all the problems you rightly denounce… the entire American, Canadian, European media - very much including The Free Press - would spend all day calling you a chaos agent. That’s what communists do to their enemies, they manufacture lies and propaganda. By now, this late in the game, shouldn’t you be wise and stable enough to stay on course and not submit yet again to the latest commie narrative?
Maybe the UAPs will save us.
Deus ex machina—literally.
I’m confused, I thought the UFOs were diabolus ex machina.
Lowercase gods.
The aliens will save us from ourselves by enslaving us equally.
Don't blame me — I voted for Kodos!
Pierre did exactly what he said he shouldn’t do in his interview with Peterson: He compromised his values to move more to the center, taking the vote of his base for granted.
Pierre alone lost this election.
Canada will suffer as a result of the cowardice of the so-called opposition leaders of Canada.
There is no party anywhere openly stating its opposition to the oligarchic class. And it's that failure to recognize the hour which causes the conservatives to lose everywhere. Trump is more of a celebrity than a genuine reformer, and his party is doing nothing in Congress as if to show their commitment to failing governance. I don't believe there is the stomach for lasting revolt, but I also unfortunately believe the political system is totally compromised and nothing but revolt, collapse, or the Hegemony for as far as the eye can see. It make it hard not to despise even more than the oligarchs the men like Pierre or Speaker Johnson who refuse to reckon with the time.
Canada like the UK and Australia do not have an evangelical voting base. Only chance was to peel off votes from working class.
There is a populist movement. Look at countries like El Salvador Hungary, Argentina etc.
From Canadian contacts, “The issue with Canada is that Ontario and Quebec control the outcome of an election, and the people that live there identify more with snub-nosed European or at best, yankee New Englanders from the U.S. North East than their neighbors down south who they loo! down upon despite being lesser than.
Pierre needed to win in Toronto and/or Montreal. The problem is Toronto is a metropolitan, multicultural cesspool who didn't like him so much as they hated Trudeau, hence the shift back to Carney.
The Bloc screwed up in their home territory - if they had maintained/held seats in Quebec we could've seen a CPC/Bloc minority.
Canada as a whole has a majority left-wing liberal population. Lefties knew this - and consolidated around the Liberals while leaving the NDP to die.
Trudeau brought in huge numbers of immigrants, and they tend to vote left.
It's true, Marla, Polievere lost his nerve and started taking advice from the pollsters and other credentialed professional politicians. It was sad to watch because even with Trump fogging the waters, I think Poli could have won, though probably only with a minority.
Marla - Try doing some comparative electoral analysis. The number one reason the Left won in Canada yesterday was that people who might have been inclined to vote for the smaller leftist or left-leaning parties, voted instead for the Liberals. The USA's current, idiotic tariff policy (along with Trump's childish trolling) helped consolidate the left and the soft center behind the Liberals. The former were never going to vote for Poilievre and the latter might have been potentially open to the supporting him (though probably not in significant numbers) but the door was closed after Trump went for 'President Man-baby' on Canada.
Vince, l posted a summary of a link. Links and posts do not necessarily reflect my views. I thought this was a thread to post links and commentary etc. There is more to discuss besides blaming Pres. Trump. I never thought Pierre was going to win. I thought he was a horrible candidate with no aspirational message. His campaign ads were atrocious. He fumbled the Peterson interview. Pierre Poilievre was elected to government office at 25 years of age. That's been his only career. Grandstanding. No fighting spirit.
From Canadian contacts, “The issue with Canada is that Ontario and Quebec control the outcome of an election, and the people that live there identify more with snub-nosed European or at best, yankee New Englanders from the U.S. North East than their neighbors down south who they look down upon despite being lesser than.
Pierre needed to win in Toronto and/or Montreal. The problem is Toronto is a metropolitan, multicultural cesspool who didn't like him so much as they hated Trudeau, hence the shift back to Carney.
The Bloc screwed up in their home territory - if they had maintained/held seats in Quebec we could've seen a CPC/Bloc minority.
Canada as a whole has a majority left-wing liberal population. Lefties knew this - and consolidated around the Liberals while leaving the NDP to die.
The problem came less from disaffected Conservatives and more from two small far left parties (NDP and Bloc Québécois) stampeding to the Liberals. The NDP is nearly wiped out.
Poilievre was quite centrist, not much different from the Liberals.
What I can say, I have zero sympathy for, and will extend zero aid to, Candadians that will soon start fleeing the hell-hole that Canada will become. As far as I am concerned, you ARE NOT WELCOME TO REFUGE in the USA. I don't want you here. You are a weak, cucked out people with zero fight in you. All of you Canadians - ALL OF YOU - have worked, over the past 60 years or so, to bring about the ruin of your country. And I have similar feelings towards Irish and English. This is what I can say, stand and fight.
I wonder if "conservative" Canadians understood that they had zero option to migrate, would we be seeing a different political dynamic up north.
"...cucked..."
That word should be used more. Especially in regards to those in our political class that live supine lives before progressives.
As if... Honestly, have you had a good look at your country lately? Trust me, there's not going to be a mass migration to the States. The Conservatives got more votes in two of the last three federal elections, most of our premiers are Conservative and they won 16 more seats in this election. We'll do fine without you, thanks.
“ All of you…” Do you remember the truckers. Your totalizing is part of the problem.
I don’t want to move there so stop being so rude. I don’t know anyone who wants to move.
I keep saying this. The last thing you should trust is the "accepted" media saying the same thing the political opposition is, at least at face value.
Your concern about the media lying is valid. Of course we shouldn't trust them. And Rod doesn't. But Trump prides himself on his ability to go around the press corps. So I don't need the media to tell me that Donald Trump is a chaos agent who appears to have no plan. That's obvious from his own actions and tweets. I would love to be wrong, but so far, there's little evidence of 4D chess.
His track record on trade also isn't good. Remember the last time Trump went on a "trade renegotiation" bender: NAFTA. After railing against NAFA for years, he negotiated a brand new one all on his own: a landmark agreement; "the best trade agreement our country has ever had." What did he change? Auto parts rules, dairy, some committees to pretend to enforce labor laws... small potatoes.
Trump is as performative as the progressives. And Rod's right, with the problems we have going on right now, we need something more than performance.
Chaos agent, yes, more specifically, keeping foes guessing and off balance. Which is a viable strategy.
"Appears to have no plan," only if you put stock in appearance...or more to the point, the framing of such appearance by his opponents.
We are just over three months into this. Takes more than that to see the unfolding of any strategy of this sort.
His track record has earned patience. If aesthetics are mainly your thing, well, I'm afraid you are out of luck, and the Miss Manners approach sailed long ago. Those kinds would get eaten alive now. See Mike Pence.
Respectfully, you can’t say he has no plan if you make no effort to listen to his team carefully and cogently explain the plan. The best interviews of the year are the ones the All In Pod did with his cabinet secretaries. This one, with Lutnick, is fascinating for the 9/11 angle alone but then there’s lots of plan detailing:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=182ckTL2KBA&pp=ygUdYWxsIGluIHBvZGNhc3QgaG93YXJkIGx1dG5pY2s%3D
This one with Bessent is also very enlightening:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lSma9suyp24&pp=ygUUYWxsIGluIHNjb3R0IGJlc3NlbnQ%3D
Maybe you’ll like them!
As for other issues and “chaos,” the right has been wailing for years and years about illegal immigration, leftist universities, global warming hysteria, affirmative action/dei, government waste, transgenderism, etc. In just 3 months Trump has been doing everything humanly possible on all those fronts, what is not to love? Should he just pick one issue at a time, go nice and slow, to avoid too much chaos? Should he give up every time a crazy judge hides illegals and not fight back? In what world can accomplishing all these goals quickly and efficiently be seen as peaceful and calm? I don’t get it.
Classic movie recommendation: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Understand your enemy and don’t be bound by fake civility.
One final remark, about you saying Rod doesn’t trust the media. Well, it’s like Michael Chrichton’s famous remark about the newspapers. Rod has absolutely zero trust in the media when it reports on issues he cares about - like Christianity, or Hungary. But when it reports on economics - which rod admits he doesn’t understand well - he seems to buy their premises. That’s an odd way to approach things in my view…
The chaos I'm talking about is economic. I support the rest. Progressives screaming about DEI is music to my ears. But Rod said it best: screwing up the economy will derail the rest of the agenda. Changes to economic policy need to be handled slowly so that private actors have time to adapt.
What does that look like: "We will be implementing a 5% global tariff on all imports starting March 1, and that will increase to 10% at the end of 2025." And stick to it. Ian Fletcher laid out a really solid industrial policy case for such a policy more than 15 years ago in Free Trade Doesn't Work. Oren Cass has a great piece today on how that could still be done: https://www.understandingamerica.co/p/trump-should-go-on-offense-against But that would require Trump to drive legislation through Congress, something he's not proven capable of doing yet. JD Vance might be able to though.
Everything else should have been within the first 100 days, but turning an economy as large as America takes time. You can do it faster, but it entails massive disruption and either a recession of huge deficit spending, the former of whicih will derail your agenda and the latter we can't afford.
Poilievre is a coward. Had he the intellectual scope to know who Rod Dreher is, he would condemn him. Poilievre is an enemy of Mark Steyn. Poilievre is Canada's Mitt Romney.
Nailed it another Mitt Romney
Style candidate with no aspirational message and no appeal to working class.
The things is: A good chunk of MAGA is looking for a savior and they think politics, and Trump, is the answer. This is the post Christian world. People filling the God shaped whole with little men.
I would say many, if not most, of MAGA ARE Christians, and quite aware of who the Savior actually is. Trump is not Jesus. Just a president they trust to do some things this nation really needs.
They know the difference.
You should, too.
People who say they are Christians or folks who have completely put their trust in Christ as the King of the Universe? You can judge a tree by its fruits.
You certainly can. Also, a Christian is a person who has accepted the gift of salvation from Christ. That does not make them that second a saint. For most, the growth comes slowly and painfully over many years, sometimes with long periods of stalls, halts and "time in the dessert."
I’m not sure what you think the answers are at this point but to work through the politics of it. Just continue being a doormat? The alternative is to turn it into a hot war. I would think most do understand it’s not going to solve everything or fill a spiritual hole but this is the best we can do with the opportunity we’ve been afforded.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/04/29/canadian-conservative-candidate-pierre-poilievre-lost-his-own-district-seat-in-election/
I'm supposed to believe that Trump caused the Canada election outcome, but the leader of the Conservatives in Canada couldn't even win his own seat - one he's held for 20 years!
Sorry, I'm not buying that this is Trump's fault. Sounds like Canada's conservatives need to get themselves figured out.
There are no conservatives in Canada, or in the rest of the Commonwealth for that matter, the way the term is understood in America. These places have a deep desire for Socialist rule. That's why Trump treats them the way he does. The overwhelming zeitgeist among Western Elites is to "wait Trump out". Trump is necessary, but not sufficient--his stance vis-a-vis the rest of the world will need continuity. These four years is just the beginning of hope, and if the American Left wins in '28, Rod's fear of the West's collapse will be assured.
Nothing like reading something from a non-Canadian telling us what we do and don't believe. You don't know a thing about this country.
J'ai entendu dire que les Canadiens peuvent légalement molester les chiens est-ce vrai? Hon hon hon
Now that's what I say. Or I'd say if I spoke French.
Gross
I was gonna head to Google Translate, but I think I get the gist.
Well please tell us what the hell is going on up there. Both parties are cucked out to the gills, there is a mana for race displacement that will see native Canadians a permanent minority within a generation, replaced by a people that have a track record of corruption, brutality and cynicism, and to what good effect. Not a peep of resistance from Canadians, but thank heavens you aren't racist, boy, that would be unpardonable. And this is just start. The economy is suffocated with regulation, crushing wages and creating an unbearable housing shortage. So, what the hell is going on up there. Tell us.
Six months ago your country had a hamburger-brained dementia patient as your President and a Maoist wine-mom running to replace him and the wine-mom nearly won. All over the West, a globalist, technocratic credentialed class who despises their fellow citizens runs a managerial state that is very difficult to knock out of place, as Trump is finding out right now. Carney and Trudeau and the Clintons and Obamas do not represent the will of their people. And Trump, in his stupidity and greed, decided to go for the W by backing the globalist class in the Canadian election instead of trying to build common cause and resistance. Which is why we never win and THEY do.
Agreed but honestly we don’t know what his motivation was, I don’t believe he is that obtuse. He understands public perception quite well and uses it to his advantage.
LOL - Trump is ALWAYS playing 4-D chess to his supporters Yes, the guy who slathers himself in bronzer each morning is a deep, strategic and reflective thinker.
Nothing like reading something from a non-Canadian telling us what we do and don't believe. You don't know a thing about this country.
Sounds like the Tories in the UK. I’m not a fan of trolling for trolling’s sake, but if a party’s leader can’t even win his own district, that party is WEAK SAUCE.
To be fair to Poilievre, his Carlton district outside of Ottawa was similar to a Northern Virginia congressional district in modern day America. In 1980, Republicans swept both Northern Virginia districts. Today, Northern Virginia has three districts that are strongly Democratic. Big Government creates lefty parasites.
That district was gerrymandered a short while ago.
*The David Cameron of Canada gets kicked out of the government*
Ahh yes, this must be Drumpf's fault :^)
This is Trump’s fault and remains so regardless of you jamming your head into your fourth point of contact.
Trump gave a lifeline to the Liberals intentionally and deliberately. Trump is at heart a Leftist - really a Peronist. And just as Juan Peron made Argentina not-so-great through his quasi Left Nationalist economic policy, so will Trump lead us to our third world future.
LOL. Amazing. Trump really does distort neuronal pathways.
Namely yours.
Lol. Thank you for some light hearted humor.
Based on his comentary on other subjects, I don't think Nigel is mentally well to begin with.
Disprove my hypothesis that Trump deliberately helped out the Liberals in the Canadian elections. Don’t be a lazy Trump Cultist - counter my argument.
There's no way to disprove an assertion about the inner workings of Trump's mind.
I don't think I can convince you that I'm not a Trump cultist. At this point I've forgotten why I thought you were mentally unstable, and I'm indeed too lazy to dig back for my reasons.
So that's going to be a no from me.
Is this Trump in the room with you now?🤭
Living rent free
This comment is deranged…
How so?
Pierre's riding (Carleton) has long been a conservative one. Guess what? The riding was recently gerrymandered. It was enlarged to absorb the neighboring riding of Kanata, which is extremely liberal and contains many zero generation immigrants who vote Liberal (or farther left NDP). Question is why didn't he get parachuted into a riding he could do better in.
Likely, Civil War result - Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
So now is as a good a time as any to get some firearm training, right?
Forearmed is forewarned, as they say.
My favorite (and more and more serious) way to finish discussions with friends about politics, the economy, etc is "buy more ammo."
Aim small, miss small.
Firearms can make things worse if they are brandished. A bad situation gets worse fast. That's what happened in a lot of African civil wars.
I voted for Trump, but I have no illusions that he’s basically a bumbling egomaniac who lives in an alternate reality. He’s preferable to the alternative, but I don’t have any confidence that he’s going to fix any long term problems, except for the border he absolutely fixed that.
Same here. I voted for him, thinking "Well, we'll have to deal with his foolishness for 4 years, but that's better than the Democrats." I hope we can get through his presidency without too much damage being done, but we'll see.
"If you think we have dodged the totalitarian bullet in the US, you are mistaken."
Indeed.
Though there is another possibility: The Directorate. Of course, that led to Napoleon, so YMMV.
"The Right now has political power in America, but it won’t hold on to it if it makes the lives of ordinary Americans worse. "
And a good test will be how the "Right" responds when enough ordinary Americans are fed up and attempt to turf it out. Given how Trump and his minions have so far responded, with fond wishes to deport US citizens to Ecuador [edit: I meant El Salvador], Bondi not ruling out arresting Supreme Court justices, Trump railing against Amazon for daring to post his own tariff charges, there is more than a whiff of suggestion that peaceful transfers of power are a diminishing likelihood.
What US citizens have been deported to Equador? Are you referring to families? These statements seem a bit emotional.
Nope. Look at Trump's own remarks to the Prez of El Salvador on his visit a couple of weeks ago. He was half-joking about extraditing "home-growns" - this was thought to be black humor at first, then the very next day Trump's own mouthpieces were actually saying they were looking into the legality of doing exactly this. These are things no US president should say even in jest, much less be taken seriously, and the sorts of things only authoritarians in other countries have done in the past.
He’s not a politician. Your griping about statements. I’m sorry but this constant fear mongering after we already had him in power for 4 years seems over the top and a little tiresome; 5 years of -he’s going to start wwiii, he’s going to ‘imprison journalists’, he’s going to prosecute his enemies (this I would support after all their shenanigans) he’s going to become a dictator- is an ongoing chorus...
"He's not a politician" is just excuse making at this point, and flatly untrue to boot. He runs the Republican party. He is the President. These are definitionally politician things.
And yes we had him running things for 4 years - over 4 years ago. That first term he was surrounded by people who told him "no" when he was off-base. He fired them. Now he only has yes-men minions. It's not the same show.
I have an interesting thought experiment: you have $100,000 to invest between now and 2030. Would you put that in the S&P 500, or buy guns/food/gold for the coming civil war? 90% of the people reading this, me included, would put that money in the market. Think about it.
I’m hedging my bets.
Excellent question, I was thinking of something similar…if you lived on the east coast in the I-95 corridor between Philadelphia and Baltimore, would you move? If so where?
We continue to leave money in the market, but did buy some gold before it went wild just in case things get weird for a little while and you need to trade for flour and half a cow..
Well, I moved to Florida :)
I'm very glad to be in Texas. I have no problem traveling far and wide, but this is home.
Why not both?
Have my IRA and 401K. Also just had three pigs butchered and the chickens are ramping up laying with Spring.
So….. bullion is fungible anywhere. If civil war happens then ammo and whiskey will be currency. Freeze dried food is good for 25 years. A little bit off this and that make a balanced approach.
I feel for young families. Dads will be more important than ever. So will be good and trustworthy friends and a true church family. Live not by lies.
Or real estate tbh
I'd put most of it in the market, meaning I do not think everything is falling apart. Any more than most other tumultuous periods this nation has been through. I wouldn't put all of it, however.
About 80 percent in the fund. 20 percent in ammo/survival food, spare parts for my main vehicle and whiskey. Not gold. Gold is useless in a survival situation.
The America empire has been on a path to failure for a long time. It should have never been born, as Americans make poor imperialists and hegemons. Instead of going back to be a normal but powerful nation in 1991, we took over the world.
This was destructive to the country. Our politicians and business folks looked globally. They encouraged the exporting of every job possible and then brought in immigrants for many jobs they couldn't export. American way of life has declined compared to the rest of the world.
This system was doomed to failure and collapse. It almost collapsed during the Cold War, but Reagan brought it back for a short time.
The Great Recession was really just a beginning. It was a failure before Biden brought in millions.
Trump is wrestling with the beast. The rest of the world and much of the powerful in America want him to fail. If Trump fails, collapse is more likely.
If Trump can kill the American empire without killing America, life in America should improve.
I'm with you on this--only I tend to take it back in my mind to 1945. It all did accelerate, disastrously, following 1991.
Good point. The empire took off during WW2 and expanded during the Cold War, built up further in the post Cold War world.
It has been unpleasant, at times, for me to come to this understanding--"what if we're the baddies"--given my views of several decades until not so many years ago. One milestone: reading The Quiet American, published in 1955 but germinating since 1951. I couldn't believe it: it was all there, embodied in that one character, in the 1950s. And we kept going down that road, and we still do.
I am a fan of many Graham Greene novels (particularly The End of the Affair). However, the idea that some novel (!!!) by a British leftist, who as he got older became an embarrassing apologist for the USSR, is a Q source for analyzing postwar US foreign policy is such a laughable take.
Congrats to the 7 people who liked the above post. THE NATION would like to offer you guys complementary subscriptions.
Clinton was pretty circumspect in the 90s, the real troubles began with 9/11 and our response to it. Similar to the Covid panic, our reaction was more deadly than the event itself.
Of course, Clinton could be considered the least serious of our presidents since Carter (though he was a serious man/thinker). Maybe we need less serious presidents.
Clinton was not bad, but still did too much -- Black Hawk Down, Bosnia, no fly zone in Iraq, being too much.
Clinton administration worldview was expansion of American power, a continuation of GHWB. We expanded bases around the world. 9/11 juiced everything, but it was largely a continuation since 1989.
TBH, in hindsight I think basically every President we’ve had since the first Bush has to be in the running for “Worst Ten Presidents in History”. I will conditionally exclude Trump from that on the condition that he succeeds in what he’s trying to do. Jury’s out. But W? Clinton? Biden? They were all awful and bear enormous amounts of responsibility for almost the whole panoply of crises we’re confronting today. Even Obama was a mediocre President at best, though at least his crime is mainly representing a gigantic missed opportunity despite some significant mistakes (like Libya).
They all went along with empire and oligarchy, independent of party. They all sold out America and Americans for power and money.
Bush 1 was never Reagan and dumped all the Reagan folks to bring in the "right" people. We now know he fought avoidable wars to benefit empire. Breaking his "read my lips, no new taxes" killed off a lot of Republican Party support.
Clinton mostly continued Bush policies and continued to sell out America. Bill might have been the best pure politician of the bunch.
Bush 2 took a crisis and made it all worse. And his domestic efforts like No Child Left Behind hurt the kids. He watched as the economy collapsed, just like he kept reading the book after the 9/11 attack.
Obama had potential, but then just let the party and Wall Street do what they wanted, and let Hillary go full neocon on the world. His contempt for the rule of law pushed things down.
Trump 1 was doing pretty good, in spite of nonstop opposition, until Covid. He didn't get what it was and how his people used Covid against him.
Biden was the worst president of my lifetime, worse even than Carter.....
The correct answer. I think we've been going the wrong way about things post World War II.
Exactly this.
Re: Instead of going back to be a normal but powerful nation in 1991, we took over the world.
We were already a hegemonic superpower in 1991. Heck we had an actual empire (=overseas provinces held by force) by 1900.
Jon, you know that both the French and the UK official empires were much bigger, that America largely stayed out of the game of empire in Africa. It had one new terroritory in Asia, a result of the Spanish-American War. Russia and Germany were also "world powers" much more so than America. It is ridiculous to compare 1900 America with 1945 American empire or today's global American hegemony.
America, even as late as the 60s, had very few imports.
My point was that American imperialism began before any of us, or our parents, were born. Yes, it was WWII that juiced it, but it was a pre-existing condition.
George Friedman's interview with Tucker Carlson last week echoes your points.
The U.S. progressive trend, begun over 100 years ago, has not been a success. We aren't naturally a people receptive to imperial power, and heck, we don't need it given the blessings of our geography and resources.
Do we not also need wise, steady conservative punditry? All this civil war talk is at least as reckless as any trolling Trump has done about making Canada the 51st state.
Did you listen to David Betz? He studies this stuff for a living. I think it is much more likely in the UK/Europe than in the US. Listen to him, then come back to me.
I will say it: Betz is wrong. The danger (and it's a damn severe one too) is WWIII among powers. And that, by the way, is how nations prevent civil war: by directing political hatreds outward. When our actual Civil War ended there were voices urging to a war with Britain (over Canada) as a quickie way to reunify the nation. Hitler and Napoleon both unified their polities by outward aggression.
Southern boys weren’t signing up to fight for a country that had killed their fathers and brothers and impoverished their mothers. I had not heard that and I believe you but that was a fools dream.
Neither Andrew Johnson nor Grant had any desire to go that route. But the British took the threat seriously which is why they spun off Canada as a separate Dominion.
The Spanish American War did involve Southerners fighting with and for those damn Yankeees and that was even celebrated as a war of national unity.
You have a point, Jon. When the Yankees stopped waving the bloody shirt in the 1890s, the South became more united with their Yankee brothers thus all the Southerners who fought in America's ridiculous war with Spain. In his restrained way, William McKinley helped North-South reconciliation. It helped that he was a brave Yankee soldier who honored his Southern opponents.
This is a good point. The issue is whether Rod and his friend David Brooks are more like Chicken Little or Cassandra. Rod’s reliance on “experts” calls to mind a maxim from my old Socialist days, attributed to Marx, if I recall correctly, “when the train of history rounds a bend, the intellectuals fall off.”
We escaped the true end of it all by the skin of our teeth in the Cuban Missile Crisis and I just hope the next time we are lucky enough to have another Deputy Brigade Commander Vasili Arkhipov.
What, who is Vasili Arkhipov? Read this. Dr. Stanciu is a brilliant writer.
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2022/08/new-barbarians-los-alamos-end-mankind-george-stanciu.html#
Betz lives in an Ivory Tower. As long as the pensions are paid, the cops are paid, the national health services provide a limited service and people get six weeks of vacation, Europeans will obey their masters. Only when that breaks, there might be revolution.
I think there has to be some reason why Trump tweeted the same insult on the eve of the election; he’s not that obtuse.
Yes, he is that obtuse. After all, why would he tweet this screed on Easter? It's unhinged.
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1913938570600993110?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1913938570600993110%7Ctwgr%5E0fa6d0bb6525393d239c57495a43fcbe68725be8%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-shreds-biden-radical-left-lunatics-easter-message
Yes. Trump is obtuse. I would vote for him tomorrow but Trump is one of the most obtuse persons in public life.
You'd even prefer him to a less loony guy with basically similar politics (on the larger questions)-- say Vance or DeSantis?
I just find it difficult for someone to claim this when he’s had so much success outside of his real estate business. He didn’t just stumble onto his success
I agree with Betz's analysis. But Democrats are far far more likely to provoke a civil war than Trump. They have no respect for free and fair elections. They oppose reforms to unrig and defraud elections. They still support invaders. Etc. Etc. And their rhetoric practically asks for insurrection.
On Canada, there already was an Alberta separatist movement. When Canada goes further down the toilet (Yes, I said "when."), that movement will become stronger.
I've found it troubling that I can no longer engage in discussion with some people about Trump's tariff's (and some other shortcomings that have occurred in his first 100 days). It reminds me of when I used to speak with people who had gotten aboard the Woke Train a number of years ago. If I express my concern, or make a simple argument, I'm met with contempt, or my argument is simply shut down so no further discussion can take place. It's as though the pendulum has swung (quite quickly) way in the other direction.
The issue is that people are living in different basic movies of reality: the differences are at close to an axiomatic level, deeper than any “argument.” You’re a Mormon, so you probably get that—some folk you can talk to, some you can’t. I don’t have “contempt” for those who have a different view, but I do believe that arguing over it is a waste of time.
For people who want a little protectionism, myself included, there is no way to see how this goes other than to see it played out.
My understanding, as in what I voted for, is for Trump to negotiate a change in world trade. We know Trump's attitude is ask for 200% and complain when he gets 80% of it but still settle. In this case Trump is going to ask for 200% but he will likely get much less than the rule of thumb.
You and Rod and others want a discussion in the middle of that process. Anyone who voted for the idea that Trump will figure it out is going to say, let the man try. He's in the middle of trying. Once there is a status quo at the end, that is what I am looking to discuss.
Additionally, a few years ago I made a decision that I was not going to lose sleep over what Trump did day to day. That plays into it too.
Trump is a reaction to the problems of Mass Media, in my opinion. That is the more interesting question to me, was Trump inevitable and how can we do better so that we don't need to go with someone who fights fire with fire?
This is the shortsightedness that really bothers me. Rod and I want to have a discussion in the middle of the process? You better believe it, and so do many, many concerned people. Lots of people who voted for Trump didn't vote for what's been going on with the tariffs.
Here's a comment I posted on another thread in response to someone who said we shouldn't be bothered by the "little bit of pain" that the tariffs may inflict on some of us (another person told me to shut up because don't I know that eggs need to be cracked in order to make an omlette):
I grow real tired of people saying that the tariffs, if left as is, will just cause a little "pain"
that people just need to shut up and accept. It's a luxury belief told by people who are very fortunate not to experience the pain.
This afternoon I looked at projections for my small business and determined that if the tariffs stick, not only will I not be hiring a new employee, like I planned a couple months ago, but I will be laying some people off. That means good people won't be providing for their families and will lose their health insurance and other benefits. We'll likely raise our costs, too, which will be passed onto consumers. Ah, you say, but this is just a little pain we all have to bear. Try telling that to people who find themselves out of work.
I have a friend who owns a trucking business. In May, he plans on laying off truckers, who I presume are largely Trump supporters. Why? Because west coast ports are going to have 50-60% less goods to deliver. Shipping is already down 30% this week. Do you think the truckers will simply accept the "pain"?
Another small business owner I know is a mom and pop retail business. He told me his margins are already tight and he won't survive the "pain" caused by the tariffs.
Another friend works for a big charity. He said that charitable giving has sharply declined and stocks and mutual funds, which make up a large part of the charity's principle income pool, has tanked, which means less money being granted to needy families and kids.
I could go on and on. If you want to know about the pain, go attend your local chamber of commerce meeting. People are rightfully scared for their businesses, their employees, and their families. There can be economic change in this country without chaos and self inflicted harm. If we keep going down this rode, though, lots of innocent people will be hurt, and it will be the Trump administration that will be blamed. Be prepared for someone from the hard left to take the reins of power.
[In sum, I, and many others, cannot sit idly by and not ask tough questions during the "middle of the process" when we are likely to experience severe hardship]
I'm sorry that you are in a tough place. You write about particular troubles that cannot be delayed too long.
Personally I hope this is resolved well enough within a short time period, weeks would be best, so that people can have stability again. If it's not weeks or a few months it will probably have to be abandoned for the reasons you outline.
The debt, the trade deficits, and leaning too hard on the dollar as the reserve currency are all long term issues that conservatives have raised time and again. If something can be done we need it done.
The news cycle is too fast. I would rather see criticism of Trump issues on a pace of weekly updates rather than the daily panic, daily details of how the sausage is made and the daily panic comments. Presidents used to go to Camp David and work on a problem for a stretch of time. Disappearing is not Trump's style but I think Trump should have that same room to work.
I'll keep you and the other business owners who comment here in my prayers when I pray for America.
I sympathize and perhaps it could be done with a surgeons knife? I don’t know however the blame should be placed where it actually belongs; the politicians who didn’t strangle globalization in its crib. We don’t make much of anything anymore and if a perfect storm happened we would be in a world of hurt.
Also similar to trying to tell people that invading Iraq was a bad idea, or that we were executing the war there poorly. I think it is more concerned with "loyalty" and which group you belong to than any pendulums.