INGRASSIA: Just How Sweeping Is MAGA’s Mandate?

On November 5th, the American people gave Donald Trump one of the most resounding and consequential political mandates in generations. By the popular vote count, he won more in total than any – legitimate – presidential candidate in history, eclipsing by 3 million his own record-breaking 74 million votes from 2020.

On the electoral college side, Donald Trump amassed more of such votes than any Republican president since George H.W. Bush, nearly forty years ago, who at that point was just one election removed from Ronald Reagan’s 49-state landslide and rode the momentum of his predecessor.

By 2024’s standards, Donald Trump’s 2024 victory – both in terms of electoral and popular vote – was a landslide. Not only were the sheer numbers unexpectedly staggering – 312 electoral votes plus 77 million popular votes.

But the context in which this victory came: multiple assassination attempts, countless phony charges and indictments, and a barrage of fake news hit jobs, makes the victory, in a word, miraculous.

Every single noteworthy institution, political and cultural, from Hollywood to the mainstream press to the Academy, was aligned against Donald Trump unlike any candidate in American history.

It is clear, especially in the aftermath of the election, why precisely they were so aligned against Donald Trump: he and his movement represented the old American nation, the remaining vestiges of the one still beholden to constitutional government and self-rule.

The countermovement, embodied by Kamala Harris, was the ideology of globalism, open-borders, and institutionalized Marxism made flesh.

It represented everything that was opposed to what America long stood for: from its focus on wasteful overseas wars while ignoring the mounting problems at home (an affront to a longstanding and venerable policy of non-interventionism whose origins lay in George Washington’s Farewell Address), to its ravenously godless attacks on morality, biological sex, and the way technology can be manipulated to control and tyrannize a collective people.

Thus, there was much at stake this election cycle. The only outstanding question really was how much of the old America still remained – how much did the American people recognize their ancestral duties to throw off the shackles of tyranny at the moment of greatest urgency. Blessedly, Americans, though late at the arrival, did indeed rise to the task.

For the first time in a generation, Republicans (at least nominally) have control of both chambers of Congress, plus the presidency, plus the Supreme Court – with an historic popular mandate to boot to help realize their agenda.

That this popular mandate was almost certainty diminished by fraud and corruption, the result of Democratic Party machinery in big cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, that actively work each election cycle to erode the Republicans’ due share of the overall vote through unlawful vote grabbing and illegal ballot dumps, only serves to underscore just how significant the mandate was.

Donald Trump won, not because he eradicated the systemic cheating that barred him from a second term four years ago, but despite that Herculean contingency.

That he did so proverbially chained for weeks on end to multiple courtrooms, itself a heinous form of election interference, is yet further testimony of just how enormous the scope of the electoral mandate he was given.

Anyone who seeks to undercut the President’s victory by claiming this election was only about inflation, the Ukrainian war, or even the crisis at the border – grave as each of those problems are – is not seeing the full picture.

This was not a mere election about politics, as that term has been conventionally understood, but a withering indictment of the regnant powers that be, their unconstitutional use and abuse of power, and the perniciously zealous ideologies of social justice wokeism they have inculcated throughout American institutions in recent decades.

The demand among the body politic to drain the swamp is a fundamental expression of MAGA’s political doctrine, which is to restore republican government and democratic rule by the people’s will, over against the unelected bureaucrats and political elite that have brought our society to near ruin.

Globalism and social justice have been the one-two punch that, like an aggressive cancer, have almost completely eroded America’s once robust institutions and civic identity.

As it turns out, Make America Healthy Again is not just a motto for rejuvenating public health, but can function as a formula for civic renewal.

We need to root out the political cancer, which requires taking a sledgehammer to institutions like the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and the myriad intelligence agencies, to return power back to their constitutionally authorized places: Congress, the individual states, and the Executive Branch under a unitary authority: namely, the President.

The structural reforms needed for government run downstream of a seismic ideological shift that goes much deeper than institutional clean-up, with origins in society and our jurisprudence going back decades.

Basically, MAGA represents a complete rejection of modern liberalism, root and branch. The ideology’s pernicious fixation on equity and diversity, at the expense of quality and freedom has finally been renounced by the American people.

The forces that have been working so vigilantly to bring down this country and make every American ashamed and embarrassed of his birthright and history, so much so that they hoodwinked millions to dismember monuments dedicated to great heroes, rename public buildings, overhaul the calendar and its sacred holidays and traditions, and engage in pitiful episodes of ritualistic self-loathing and denounce Christian morality, have been utterly rejected.

The invidious superstitions that unify the cult of HR-managers, social justice activists, and pronoun policers have been dealt a major blow, hopefully terminal, and should never be permitted to go anywhere near the levers of power again.

The next four years of course will be a continuation of this generational tug-of-war; but the war itself is worthy and necessary, for the ideological forces that guided the Left, and their political successes through Obama, Biden, the Mueller investigation, Jack Smith, the January 6th Committee, and the various forms of persecution against Donald Trump, his allies, and his supporters over years and years, must be defeated once and for all.

They have demonstrated, by so flagrantly and brazenly weaponizing justice against Donald Trump and the January 6th demonstrators, for example, that their ideology is incompatible with free government and justice, as that term has long been understood under the Constitution.

In America, you do not prosecute your political enemies, let alone innocent civilians who exercise their God-given rights that also happen to be enshrined, protected, and guaranteed by the law of the land. The movement that does engage in such feverish zealotry has abdicated forever its claim to power.

Donald Trump’s mandate hence runs much deeper than another mere political victory. This is not politics or business as usual.

This is a wakeup call by the American people to destroy what Elon Musk calls the “Woke Mind Virus” once and for all: to obliterate it from our institutions and from public life in general and put this country on sound footing again to reclaim the mantle of its hallowed inheritance of a once great and mighty people.

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BREAKING: Did Russia and China Sever NATO Cables to Block an Attack and Delay World War 3?

By Unleashed News
By Guest Contributor Jason Sullivan at the Gateway Pundit | November 30, 2024

In a move that could have seismic implications for NATO’s strategic capabilities, two critical undersea communication cables in the Baltic Sea—lifelines of military coordination among NATO allies—were severed in what increasingly appears to be a calculated act of hybrid warfare. The timing of these incidents, coming mere hours after the Biden administration authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied ATACMS long-range missiles against Russian targets, raises the unmistakable specter of a coordinated response by Russia, with China’s complicity, aimed at halting NATO’s ability to act decisively during a crucial moment in this escalating conflict.

The severing of these cables appears to be more than a mere act of sabotage. It may well represent a brilliant and calculated geopolitical move designed to delay NATO’s escalation until President Donald J. Trump, known for his aversion to endless wars and commitment to diplomacy, is sworn in as the 47th President of the United States on January 20, 2025.

A Timeline That Demands Attention

November 16, 2024: The Biden administration authorizes Ukraine to employ long-range ATACMS missiles to strike Russian targets, marking a significant escalation in the U.S.’s involvement in the war.
November 17, 2024: The first of two undersea cables, the BCS East-West Interlink connecting Lithuania and Sweden, is severed.
November 18, 2024: The C-Lion1 cable, which links Finland and Germany, is also cut.

The proximity of these events is impossible to ignore. Within 48 hours of the Biden administration’s decision, NATO’s communication capabilities were significantly disrupted in a strategic region critical to European and global security.

Map by: TeleGeography. Notes by: Jason Sullivan

The Suspect: Chinas Bulk Carrier Yi Peng 3

Enter the Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3. Anchored suspiciously in international waters near the sites of both cable cuts, this vessel has been identified as a potential actor in the disruptions. Investigators suspect the ship’s massive anchor, potentially weighing several tons, was deliberately dragged across the seabed, ripping through these vital cables.

Despite Sweden’s urgent requests, the ship has remained anchored in place, with no indication that China will permit it to move into Swedish waters for inspection. Nor has any authority been allowed to board the vessel. This steadfast refusal to cooperate heightens suspicions of China’s involvement in what could be a coordinated act of sabotage in league with Russia.

Image by: VesselFinder

A Strategic Disruption of NATO Coordination

The severing of the C-Lion1 and BCS East-West Interlink cables has left NATO temporarily reliant on slower and less secure backup systems, such as satellite communications. These cables are not mere civilian communication lines; they are the backbone of NATO’s real-time military coordination between its Nordic and Baltic allies. By severing these lines, Russia and China have potentially achieved several strategic objectives:

Preventing a Coordinated NATO Attack:

The ATACMS authorization opened the door for Ukraine to strike deeper into Russian territory with precision-guided missiles, a move that likely prompted Moscow to fear an immediate escalation. By disrupting NATO’s ability to coordinate long-range strikes and joint operations, Russia has effectively bought time to regroup and respond without the looming threat of synchronized NATO aggression.

Demonstrating NATOs Vulnerability:

This act underscores NATO’s reliance on undersea infrastructure and its vulnerability to hybrid warfare. The inability to restore real-time communication quickly between key member states like Finland, Germany, Lithuania, and Sweden places NATO in a precarious position during this critical window.

Delaying Escalation Until January 2025:

With President Donald Trump poised to take office in less than two months, Russia and China may see this as an opportunity to stall NATO’s war machine. Trump’s track record of avoiding entanglements and seeking diplomatic solutions could mean a potential cooling of tensions in the new year—a stark contrast to the escalation strategy pursued under the Biden administration.

How Critical Were These Cables?

C-Lion1 (Finland-Germany): A high-capacity line enabling secure communications and data transfer between Nordic countries and NATO’s central command in Germany. This cable is integral for military logistics and real-time decision-making.
BCS East-West Interlink (Lithuania-Sweden): Provides vital connectivity between the Baltic states and NATO-aligned Sweden, crucial for regional security in a region bordering Russia.

The loss of these cables has effectively hampered NATO’s ability to synchronize responses, share intelligence, and execute operations in the Baltic Sea, a theater of immense strategic importance. For Russia, this creates a temporary but critical advantage.

The Deliberate Success of Hybrid Warfare

The methods used—deliberately dragging a multi-ton anchor across undersea cables—are both rudimentary and effective. Given the size of the anchor and the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea, the likelihood of completely severing these cables was extraordinarily high. This was not an act of chance; it was a calculated move designed to ensure maximum disruption.

Repair Timeline: A Strategic Delay

Repairing undersea cables of this importance is no small feat. Current estimates suggest that full restoration could take 6–8 weeks, pushing the completion date to late January 2025 or beyond. During this time, NATO’s ability to respond to any Russian aggression remains severely compromised, leaving member states vulnerable and divided.

This delay plays directly into the hands of Russia and China, giving them a critical window to consolidate their positions and deter further escalation.

Conclusion: A Masterstroke of Strategic Timing

The severing of these undersea cables appears to be a masterstroke of hybrid warfare, executed with precision timing and strategic intent. By crippling NATO’s communications and coordination capabilities in the Baltic Sea, Russia and China have forced the alliance to pause and consider its vulnerabilities. This move buys critical time for both nations—time to avoid further escalation until a Trump administration potentially reorients U.S. foreign policy toward diplomacy over war.

The Biden administration’s authorization of ATACMS strikes may have been the spark, but the severing of NATO’s critical infrastructure could very well be the fuse that prevents the flames from spreading further—at least for now.

For Russia and China, this is more than a tactical victory; it is a demonstration of how hybrid warfare can tilt the balance in a conflict where every second counts.

Source Links

Submarine Cable Map – BCS East-West Interlink and C-Lion1
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/multiselect/submarine-cable?ids=bcs-east-west-interlink%2Cc-lion1
VesselFinder – Real-Time Tracking of Yi Peng 3
https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9224984
Wikipedia: 2024 Baltic Sea Submarine Cable Disruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Baltic_Sea_submarine_cable_disruptions
Wikipedia: C-Lion1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-Lion1
Wikipedia: BCS East-West Interlink
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS_East-West_Interlink

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Employees Across 20 Countries Aim to ‘Make Amazon Pay’ by Dealing the Company a Black Friday Blow

The world’s largest online retailer is facing work-stopping protests from employees around the world — on the busiest shopping days of the year.

The UNI Global Union, an international labor group, and Progressive International, a “post-capitalist” political umbrella group, are organizing strikes at Amazon facilities in more than 20 countries, according to ABC News.

The actions are scheduled to run from Black Friday (the global term for the Friday after Thanksgiving in the U.S.) through Cyber Monday, covering the weekend that traditionally kicks off the holiday shopping season.

Workers for the largest online retailer in the world are planning to go on strike during one of the busiest shopping weekends of the holiday season. https://t.co/m1F95Xet4M

— ABC 7 Chicago (@ABC7Chicago) November 29, 2024

The “Make Amazon Pay” action is in its fifth year, according to a UNI Global news release.

It includes actions by Amazon employees in “Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and beyond,” the release stated.

The effort is also targeting Amazon facilities in India, attacking the company’s treatment of employees during a deadly heat wave in the country over the summer.

The campaign exists “to hold Amazon accountable for labor abuses, environmental degradation and threats to democracy,” the UNI Global release claimed.

Amazon workers in more than 20 countries, including the U.S., plan to strike during the busy pre-Christmas shopping days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday to “make Amazon pay,” strike organizers said Thursday. pic.twitter.com/DiL6xszntb

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 29, 2024

It’s no accident that the activities are set for the worst possible time for the sometimes controversial online retailer, which has made founder Jeff Bezos one of the world’s richest men.

The holiday shopping season is huge for any business, but Amazon’s sheer size and global reach make it unique.

In 2023, Amazon accounted for 18 percent of all Black Friday sales worldwide, ABC reported.

How much impact the actions will have is questionable.

ABC reported, Amazon recorded record profits last year during the “Make Amazon Pay” action.

For its part, the company maintains the union “is being intentionally misleading and continues to promote a false narrative.”

“The fact is at Amazon we provide great pay, great benefits, and great opportunities — all from day one,” Amazon spokeswoman Eileen Hards said in a statement, according to ABC.

[ic_related]

“We’ve created more than 1.5 million jobs around the world, and counting, and we provide a modern, safe, and engaging workplace whether you work in an office or at one of our operations buildings.”

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

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Lawsuit Filed After LGBT Promoter Stages ‘Setup’ on Christian Jewelry-Store Worker, Gets Her Fired

This article originally appeared on WND.com

Guest by post by Bob Unruh

‘It appears as though Kay Jewelers is anti-Christian.’

A lawsuit has been filed against Kay Jewelers after a Christian employee was fired for talking about her faith with a co-worker.

Commentator Todd Starnes explained the situation had the markings of a “setup.”

“The conversation happened in a back work area at a Kay Jewelers in Fairlawn, Ohio. The coworker continuously pressed (Mika) Cohen for her personal opinions about Pride Month. Finally, she explained that she is a Christian and shared her sincerely held beliefs on God’s definition of marriage and sexuality,” he explained. “A few weeks later Kay Jewelers launched a HR investigation into the conversation alleging her remarks were inappropriate.”

Shortly later, she was fired.

“It certainly appears as though Cohen is the victim of a setup by a pro-LGBT staffer. To make matters even worse, it appears as though Kay Jewelers is anti-Christian. Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but Kay Jewelers is certainly no friend to Christians,” he said.

It is the American Center for Law and Justice that took on the case.

It said it is defending “an employee’s right to express her religious beliefs,” this time in Ohio.

Cohen was dismissed by Kay from her position as assistant manager in Fairlawn, Ohio, for sharing her Christian beliefs with a co-worker after repeatedly being asked to do so, the legal team said.

The law firm explained how the situation developed:

While working at Kay Jewelers in June 2023, Ms. Cohen’s co-worker asked for her thoughts and opinions on a religious topic. Importantly, while Ms. Cohen’s co-worker prodded Ms. Cohen’s position on the topic out of the earshot of customers or other employees, Ms. Cohen politely attempted to avoid speaking on the subject completely by saying everyone is entitled to their own opinions.

Nonetheless, the co-worker gave her opinion on God’s creation of humanity and kept prodding Ms. Cohen to share her religious beliefs. After being pressured repeatedly to share her beliefs, Ms. Cohen finally shared her beliefs on the Bible’s teachings.

The ACLJ confirmed there was “no quarrel or hostility,” and the conversation ended shortly.

Then Cohen was informed by Kay that an investigator was looking into her “inappropriate discussions of religion at work.

Then came her firing.

“No further explanation was given and no termination letter was provided – Ms. Cohen was simply told to pack up her things and leave,” the ACLJ said. “This uncalled-for and unjust termination left Ms. Cohen and her family without insurance to cover medical necessities and much of the income upon which they relied.”

Kay’s parent company does, in fact, promote the leftist beliefs about “diversity, equity, and inclusivity” on its website.

“Clearly, this ‘commitment’ only applies to non-Christian beliefs that do not align with the Bible’s teachings. Kay Jewelers’ conduct in this case demonstrates no valid basis to fire Ms. Cohen, and its lack of transparency or accountability for violating Ms. Cohen’s rights constitutes a blatant disregard for religious freedom and a demonstrative act of religious intolerance,” the charges by ACLJ include.

Copyright 2024 WND News Center

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America’s Last Englishman

America’s Last Englishman

A new book examines the ever-fascinating Marble Man.

Robert E Lee: A Life, Allen Guelzo, Alfred A. Knopf, 588 pages

I first moved to Richmond Virginia, escaping the murmurs of a nascent statue-toppling cultural revolution in England, in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 cultural revolution in America, and the Monument Avenue of Richmond, once a proud host of several pristine statues, looked somewhat similar to Palmyra in Syria après ISIS. The Robert Edward Lee statue that was in the middle of the road was a giant cratered husk, its surrounding park graffitied with incoherent, semi-literate obscenities. Within three years, his namesake university would remove the plaque and headstone of his horse

Unpersoning controversial figures (or even their beasts of burden) from history is arguably the primary marker of an unconfident and uncivilized nation, but even by that measure, the particular fanaticism against Lee defies logic, as it is so vehemently ahistorical and primal. Lee demands strong reactions, mostly by those who are utterly ignorant about him, good or bad. Scores of overtly online first generation migrants to this country routinely denounce him as a traitor to the “idea of America” demanding that all traces of him should be removed from public life; which in itself is absurd, if one compares them to those who actually fought him or lived in the aftermath of the civil war. 

Consider this particular assessment. “Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle.”

That was Dwight D. Eisenhower in a letter to a student of his time, one who even then, similar to most students now, did not possess the intellectual depth or moral gravitas in differentiating and judging the man separate from the circumstance. Eisenhower, no neo-Confederate himself, continued, “Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.” 

My original interest in Lee was tangential and not solely because I am newly assimilated to his native land. I am academically interested in the subject of “proclamations of neutrality,” a strategic posture, often used in history by smart great powers to stay away from peripheral conflicts, back when boundaries and borders were important, and the world wasn’t a giant human-rights covered NGOcratic glob for every whiggish busybody to interfere everywhere. Prudential American presidents used it repeatedly, from Washington (in France), to Grant (Prussia) and Theodore Roosevelt (during the Russo-Japanese war). But most famously it was used by Great Britain to declare neutrality in the American civil war, a war “between cousins,” where the British people were allowed to aid and battle on behalf of whichever side they so chose depending on their personal morality. 

Palmerston and the British aristocracy had no fellow feeling for the ultra-puritan, ultra-republican North, and shared stronger bonds of kinship, temperament, and high-Anglican culture with the landed gentry of the South. And yet the Southern strategy of involving Britain failed. Chastised in Crimea and India half a decade earlier, London had no appetite for another civil war in another theater and no intention of being enmeshed with the involvement of rivals such as France. Instead London chose to focus on consolidating the empire. Worried about revolutionary instincts and the mass opposition to slavery, Britain was pragmatic enough to actively allow British subjects to go and join any conflict as well as profit from any war, to satiate their martial cravings. Lincoln, the tyrant who destroyed habeas corpus per some British elites, won the war and changed the character of the republic permanently, and Lee, the last true Englishman of America, to channel Lord Robert Cecil, lost the civil war, and accordingly, the subsequent war of narrative and history. 

It is difficult to find decent biographies of Lee; older ones are either too hagiographic, or per modern sensibilities determined by publishing houses to be unimportant enough to be out of print permanently, and newer ones are ritualistically inculpatory of him. It might prove to be career destroying for modern academic historians to be truly revisionist about the man. So credit goes to Allen Guelzo to even attempt to bridge that with his Robert E. Lee: A Life. Guelzo admits his bias right off the bat. He is a northerner and trained to regard Lee as a traitor. Guelzo, however, attempts to study Lee’s motivations, and not just his actions right or wrong. That itself gives the book a new character. Whether the evidence and assertions are true or false is a different question; historiography is rarely monocausal or objective. But it is a unique attempt. 

Guelzo admits that Lee was recorded as a decent and noble man even by his contemporaries and adversaries, a sense of Christian charity and sensibility towards opponents that we now have lost. He cites Abraham Lincoln who remarked that Lee was “noble and brave,” and Ulysses Grant, who wondered how he looked next to a man of “much dignity” and “handsomely dressed, six feet high and faultless form.” Even in defeat, Lee maintained “manly decorum” and came “dressed in full uniform which was entirely new” and wearing a “sword of considerable value.”

Chivalry, pedigree, decorum, and class are things few people inherit, and the descendant of revolutionary war hero Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee III had that in his blood. Guelzo admits that “no one who met Robert Edward Lee—no matter what the circumstances of the meeting—ever seemed to fail to be impressed by the man. His dignity, his manners, his composure, all seemed to create a peculiar sense of awe in the minds of observers.”

So why did the man, whose haunted stoic face we see adorned similar to an Orthodox saint in the pages of history, decide to take up arms against his country? Guelzo traces that to three psychological instincts, his desire for independence, security, and perfection, “all three rooted in the early trauma inflicted by one of the more remarkably dysfunctional families of the early republic.” Lee wanted to fulfill the life he never had due to the abandonment of his father. Every single major act in his life, from joining the army as an engineer to his ideas about slavery, to his love for Virginia, to his war on his revolutionary forefather’s flag stemmed from that. Guelzo writes, “He would sacrifice himself in order to perfect the imperfections Light Horse Harry had visited on the Lees.” Lee was determined to not be his father, and in that urge, he was visited by “his ferocious outbursts of temper at his own and others’ imperfections.”

The trouble with psychological analysis is that it is not objective. Guelzo, despite his attempt to ensure some neutrality, partially fails the task that he explicitly put to himself. For example, Guelzo admits that Lee was not ambivalent about the practice of slavery and in fact considered it a “moral and political evil” that, however, he was willing to let God solve in His own time. Lee wasn’t a bigot, despite the fact that he shared the attitudes of his time on cumulative racial disparities. Is that wrong? I am not sure I am qualified to judge the prevalent attitude of an age, as a historian. What can be judged are Lee’s recorded actions. “He funded the expatriation of slaves from Arlington who agreed to resettle in the American Colonization Society’s West African outpost of Liberia and in 1862 completed the emancipation of the Custis slaves (which he was obligated to do by his father-in-law’s will) and then freed his own (which he was not).” After the war, as president of Washington College, he strictly prevented racial violence against freedmen. 

Guelzo also demonstrates how Lee was appalled at the violence against radical anti-slavery activists. Lee simply preferred order. Guelzo then proceeds to show how Lee was temperamental and had two slaves whipped for trying to flee. Guelzo’s sole evidence is the record of an abolitionist newspaper that Lee lost temper and flayed his wayward slaves. Lee’s own words addressing that episode were a curt refusal to reply. One is not sure how neutral the narrative or how sound that evidentiary criteria are, when the claims of a radical newspaper are considered an ultimate arbiter of truth in a classic “both said” scenario, especially when one can consider how Lee viewed the idea of Anglican honor, as evident from his previously recorded treatment in freeing other slaves. 

Similarly, Guelzo states that Lee wasn’t profound. “His compulsive letter writing betrays little evidence of reading beyond the demands of his profession. But he was a clear thinker, and much of that thinking oscillated within the poles he had set up for himself of perfection, independence, and security.” It is an interesting circular reasoning, as situational clarity without profundity is arguably impossible. It is even more absurd, as Guelzo demonstrates Lee’s logical reasoning during the war. “Lee saw more clearly than any other Confederate leader that the South could not survive a long-drawn bout with the North. Southern armies must move across the Potomac and there persuade Northerners, either by battle or by simple occupation, to agree to peace and Southern independence. He would attempt this twice, in 1862 and 1863, and was ready for a third attempt in 1864 when Grant’s Overland Campaign struck that option away.”

Lee foresaw the loss as he understood the value of Richmond. “With Richmond would go Virginia and then the Confederacy—which, in 1865, is exactly what happened.” Is that logic lacking intellectual depth or historical knowledge of warfare? I suggest the readers to judge themselves reading Lee’s letters, in Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s magisterial study Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters

Guelzo is a beautiful writer, and for that one can be thankful as historical writing that is also beautiful literature is increasingly a lost art. His depiction of Lee’s visit to Stratford, and his father’s grave, after his father’s death has a Orson Wellesian feel to it. Lee’s death itself was haunting. But most poetically, Lee found satisfaction in the final years of his life. Guelzo writes, “Perhaps, in retrospect, we can say that Robert Lee should have shrugged off the shadow of Light Horse Harry; perhaps he should have left the Army and built a real estate empire in western Virginia; perhaps he should have become the handsome but aloof family overseer of Arlington and let the Civil War and the taint of treason wash past him. But he did not, and the forces that had made him what he was in the past governed the extraordinary skill with which he managed Confederate military affairs. They did not, however, make him a happy man. That only came at the end, in Lexington. But it was, for him, a perfect end.”

The word “treason” is jarring in that otherwise ornamental paragraph. Was Lee guilty of treason? One might argue, as much as George Washington himself, a name he shares at a university and a name under whose banner his forefathers fought in the revolutionary war. There was no idea of national unity then anyway, and even the military oath was to a Union of States, arguably closer to the founders’ visions of a minimalist federal republic where supreme loyalty from the residents was towards their states. 

Whether it was a sustainable vision, I am not sure. Republics are notoriously difficult arrangements to keep and maintain, their historical ends caused foremost, among others, due to a lack of order, which also paradoxically leads to further erosion of republican norms. History is interesting that way, opinions change with time. How the northern European barbarians viewed the Roman empire is different than how we view it now, just as how we view the British empire will be different in three to five hundred years’ time. If the fate of every republic is to inevitably overcome its own contradictions and become an empire, then for good or for bad, it was Lincoln who started that consolidation process and it was Lee who rebelled against it clasping to a higher ideal. 

Regardless, Guelzo’s book is a worthy addition in the historiography of the Confederates. One only wishes there were more revisionist and neutral studies of that period and those men, and not fewer. As for Lee, one of the complex, imperfect, haunted, great men of history, the verdict of history itself will continue to be more nuanced than contemporary historians, for as long as there are other men who will continue to be fascinated about tortured great men from the past. As some of the Confederate graves in Richmond note, fate denied them victory, but in a strange way, granted them immortality. 

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Will Policing D.C.’s Buses Stop Fare Evasion?

Will Policing D.C.’s Buses Stop Fare Evasion?

Probably, but only through sheer force.

(Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Right now it costs $2.25 to take the bus in Washington, DC. But soon it will cost you a lot more if you attempt to ride without paying. Starting the week after Thanksgiving, Metro police will crack down on fare evasion within the bus system, which in the last year has reached an almost unbelievable 75 percent.

This is big news locally, though it was largely lost amid the other upheavals in the capital this month. Last week at a press conference, Randy Clarke, general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, announced that WMATA plans to aggressively police the bus system with a combination of uniformed police officers, undercover cops, and a whole new system of video surveillance. He employed the same strategy—with the crucial addition of virtually unhoppable fare gates—on the Metro rail system last year to great success, driving fare evasion down 82 percent.

But the bus is harder to police than the trains, as I have written in these pages before. As there are many more bus stops than train stations, and as there are no fare gates on buses, the only way to enforce order within the system is to flood it with cops. During the pandemic and in the aftermath of the summer of Floyd, there was little energy among Washingtonians for that kind of hands-on policing. But now that service is lagging and crime on the bus is visible even to those who don’t use it, attitudes have changed favorably to a harsher regime. 

Where mild strictures fail, force often succeeds: I have no doubt that posting police officers all over the city’s bus systems will bring down fare evasion rates. In fact, it may be the only way to confront the problem (leaving aside the popular, brainless idea of making the bus “free”). But already I can sense the beginnings of a public relations disaster for WMATA. 

“We are going to go after the bus system much more significantly with a data-driven, targeted approach on bus fare evasion,” Clarke said at the press conference, adding that he plans to post Metro police at crowded bus bays and along the lines with the “lowest compliance” on fares. Those who attempt to sneak on the bus will be physically prevented from riding. “Basically, if you don’t pay, you’re not getting on,” Clarke said. And WMATA has begun eyeing bus lines for increased police presence, among them the P12 line in Prince George’s County and the X2 line in D.C., which runs from Minnesota Avenue through the so-called H Street Corridor behind Union Station. 

If you have any familiarity at all with the socio-economic spread in the Washington metropolitan area—and if you know what the phrase “data-driven” is usually a euphemism for in law enforcement—then you can guess what I am getting at here. The new system may work, but it is built on a shaky foundation, at least as far as public perception goes. It will take just one nasty interaction between a Metro police officer and a fare evader on the P12 or the X2 or any of the other bus lines where the “data” finds “lowest compliance” for the whole system to come undone. A decade ago Eric Garner became a martyr over loose cigarettes. In the coming years, some poor fare-evader in D.C. could become a cause célèbre in much the same way.

No one wants something so horrible as that to happen, and yet such incidents seem depressingly inevitable. It’s not just in D.C. The problem of American law enforcement is like a swinging pendulum: When crime is rampant, the public demands active policing. But when cops out on the beat have a nasty run-in with someone who didn’t deserve to die, demands swing the other way. And so on, back and forth, ad aeternum

The only people who come out on top here are those privileged few who slide through the system, no matter the reigning policing fad. When WMATA announced the coming crackdown, Fox 5 sent a camera crew to Tenley Circle in Northwest D.C. to talk to people at the bus stop. In a telling interview, the Fox television reporter stopped a young man wearing Georgetown University gear and asked him if he had ever gotten on the bus without paying his fare.

“Yeah,” he replied, with the nervous laughter of someone who knows he has done wrong—but is confident that he’ll get away with it.

The post Will Policing D.C.’s Buses Stop Fare Evasion? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Will the Post-Trump GOP Have a Money Problem?

Will the Post-Trump GOP Have a Money Problem?

In 2028, the Republicans won’t be able to coast on celebrity.

Donald Trump is an enigma. Had he not raised a single dollar in his presidential campaign, he would still have dominated the airwaves and the social media feeds, appearing everywhere from massive rallies to Joe Rogan’s podcast (over 51 million views on YouTube alone) to a McDonald’s drive thru window or a garbage route near you. The man is a master of the media, able to appear on every phone, computer, and television in the country without spending a cent.

Add in the fact that, even before his first term as president and multiple nationwide political campaigns, he was a household name from The Apprentice, Trump hotels and high-end condos, and decades of celebrity status. It is unquestionable that Trump is no ordinary political candidate. He simply doesn’t need the same campaign apparatus to get his message out to the voters.

Yet even for Trump the media genius, money does matter. True, Trump needs no improvement in name recognition and therefore it might not be particularly important for Trump to spend cash on t-shirts, yard signs, and media buys. But the get-out-the-vote effort matters and that costs money too. We saw this in 2020 and 2022, as the Democrat machine mobilized armies to chase mail-in ballots and stuff drop boxes while Republicans remained extremely skeptical of early voting. The results speak for themselves. In 2024, Republicans caught on and promoted early voting throughout the country. Republican efforts, led by everyone from Elon Musk to Charlie Kirk and Scott Presler, paid off. Early voting surged in Republican strongholds and the Democrats lost their advantage of banking votes before election day. 

Though Harris outraised Trump both in donations to the official party committees and to aligned PACs, Trump made up for the campaign cash deficit with his ability to attract influential people and dominate the news cycle. This superstar campaign attracted online influencers, extremely talented political operatives, and powerful billionaires into the fold. The result was astounding: 312 electoral votes. But more importantly, the realignment that conservatives have been talking about for over a decade. Latino voters broke hard for Trump; the black vote shifted; religious voters abandoned the Democratic party; and even the Amish came out to stop the Democrats from winning the White House.

Republicans can solidify their new status as the party of the working class (not merely the white working class), the party of peace, and as the party of normal, healthy living. This is a coalition that can win elections and wield power. But what will happen when Trump is gone? Will there be a money problem that will render 2024 a one-off rather than a sea change?

The likely answer is “yes, there may very well be a money problem for the GOP after Trump.” But the problem is not insurmountable. As corporate America has veered left, it is no longer a reliable source of GOP money. The Democrats have control of Hollywood, the corporate class, and most of the wealthy elites. The Republicans, transitioning to this new working class coalition, need to take stock of the situation, reassess their sources of political funding, and allocate resources efficiently to address the realities of modern campaigns.

If money was necessary to mount an effective voter registration and “get out the vote” campaign for a celebrity candidate like Trump in 2024, money will become an even more necessary issue to deal with for the GOP in 2028 and beyond. Republicans need to find an effective strategy for both major sources of donor dollars as well as small-dollar donations. 

On the former front, Republicans need to navigate the ongoing realignment and find demographics within the corporate world and among wealthy individuals that will invest resources into GOP campaigns. While Silicon Valley brings concerning secular and libertarian values that threaten the social conservatism necessary to a healthy conservative movement, it remains a necessary part of the new coalition. Silicon Valley executives and companies bring a vast amount of wealth, coupled with a growing skepticism towards wokeism and excessive government burdens on the market and on individual liberties. Again, this coalition needs to be managed in tension with conservatism, but it is a vital source of campaign revenue. JD Vance, with his ties to Peter Thiel in particular and the Silicon Valley tech/venture capital crowd in general, offers a path to managing this coalition and strengthening these ties with needed donors to combat the corporate money pouring in on the left. There are also gains to be made among certain labor/union coalitions, especially as the GOP continues to take its place in the new political alignment as the party of the working man.

Small-dollar donations are also a challenge the GOP needs to continue to solve. Again, as the GOP moves from the party of big corporations of decades past to the party of the everyman, it needs to capture this reality in dollars. Massive corporate donations have moved to the left and ordinary people of ordinary means are increasingly the GOP base. Yes, the Republicans have quite the operation of spam text messages and emails soliciting donations, but there needs to be a culture shift, not just a scattershot marketing campaign. 

There needs to be a concerted effort to create a culture where the MAGA base realizes the stakes. The party that represents them cannot win on ideas and memes; at the end of the day, the number of operations on the ground to register new voters, flip Democrats to Republicans, chase early and mail-in votes, and get out the vote on election day is an absolute necessity. Popular parties and ideas do not win unless they master and dominate the election process. These ordinary, working-class voters need to be convinced of the importance of campaign dollars to win elections and enact their policy preferences. Every dollar counts.

Finally, the GOP needs to continue to overhaul its electioneering approach and tailor it to the 21st century. If campaign funds are already a challenge and Democrats are severely out-fundraising Republicans, Republicans need to master efficiency and spend every dollar where it matters most. T-shirts and lawn signs? Useful tools for local candidates to boost name recognition. But for presidential candidates, they make little sense: everyone knows who the two candidates are and nobody is changing his mind about who to vote for over a cluster of signs on the freeway or his neighbors’ lawns. It might be prudent for campaigns to maintain an online store where they can sell the campaign paraphernalia, but campaigns should not be spending precious resources on swag for the fans. 

Republicans need to skip many avenues of legacy campaign spending (I’m not just talking lawn signs but ineffective, outdated, and overpriced general consultants as well), take advantage of free media (why pay for so much primetime TV airspace if Joe Rogan invites you on the podcast?), and focus campaign dollars on the ground. Republicans need to organize and spend their money on voter registration drives, ballot chasing, and election day get-out-the-vote efforts. That push to translate platform and popularity into votes on election day is where the money needs to be focused.

Hope is not lost for the post-Trump GOP, but the financial strategy needs to be intentional. When the GOP loses its TV star front man, we will need to address that the Democrats out fundraise and outspend us. We need to acknowledge that and adapt: adjust fundraising strategies to the ongoing political realignment, assess where money needs to be spent, and create from the ashes of the old GOP a lean, mean, election-winning machine.

The post Will the Post-Trump GOP Have a Money Problem? appeared first on The American Conservative.

THE POOR DEARS: White House Reporters Claim They’re Already ‘Exhausted’ by Second Trump Administration

Donald Trump has not even been sworn in yet and White House journalists are already saying that they are ‘exhausted’ by the second Trump administration. Don’t you feel bad for them?

The vast majority of these people like it when Democrats are in charge because they can just act like stenographers, taking the government’s word on everything and rarely asking questions about anything.

Suddenly, when Trump (or any Republican, really) is in charge, they remember that they have to do their jobs and ask questions about things. Almost overnight, they feel the need to ‘fact check’ everything the government tells them. No wonder they’re tired.

FOX News reports:

White House reporters already ‘exhausted’ by second Trump administration

The White House press corps is already “exhausted” at the outset of the second Trump administration.

“Anybody who went through it the last time remembers how nonstop it was. It ends up kind of becoming all-consuming and taking over your life. It wears you down,” New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker told Vanity Fair on Wednesday, adding that “you have to expect that covering a big story is, by definition, taxing because it’s important.”

Reporters commented on how President-elect Trump was already kicking off a hectic news cycle with his rapid policy and cabinet nomination announcements.

“Everybody’s exhausted, and he hasn’t even taken office yet,” Baker said.

The Hill national political reporter Julia Manchester described Trump as “someone who thrives on unpredictability” with a sense of “déjà vu” permeating the press corps.

“It was right into the fire with this transition, with the Cabinet picks. And I think overall, just outside of the press corps, the country itself was feeling burnt out,” Manchester said.

People commented about this on Twitter/X:

It’s harder because this time they aren’t part of the administration. https://t.co/NnxnAlr7hv

— David Marcus (@BlueBoxDave) November 28, 2024

Then learn to code https://t.co/GJcpDZwtuH

— FilmLadd (@FilmLadd) November 28, 2024

Have they ever thought about quitting? Their jobs are useless and no one will miss their work. https://t.co/oY64BUod2f

— CPickDC (@cpickdc) November 28, 2024

They ain’t see nothing yet https://t.co/375uEnxUBa

— MFCFLA (@MFCFLA86) November 28, 2024

Some of these people in media should seriously consider a career change.

The post THE POOR DEARS: White House Reporters Claim They’re Already ‘Exhausted’ by Second Trump Administration appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

After Democrats Suffered a Massive Election Loss, Progressive ‘Influencers’ Say the Party Just Needs to Give Them MORE MONEY

The 2024 election saw the rise of so-called progressive ‘influencers’ who were supposed to help the Democrats get elected. Things obviously didn’t go according to plan. The Democrats lost. Big time.

Now the ‘influencers’ are seeing their gravy train coming to an end and they don’t want that. They are insisting that Democrat donors need to give them more money. That’ll solve the problem, right?

Having tons of cash to work with didn’t help Kamala Harris in the end, did it?

This is incredible

Liberal podcasters and influencers are claiming that Dems can only win if the podcasters/influencers get year-round funding from donors

They cashed in on the Kamala gravy train and now they don’t want to give it up pic.twitter.com/dWw7bZOAQO

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) November 29, 2024

From the New York Times:

Interviews with more than a dozen Democratic content creators reveal a pervasive belief that Republicans have helped incubate a highly organized and well-funded ecosystem of influencers, podcast hosts and other online personalities who successfully amplified and spread pro-Trump content. And the content creators are blaming scattershot and underfunded efforts by Democrats to make an impression in a sphere they said the party as a whole had overlooked for at least a decade.

While many on the left have spent the last few weeks debating whether Ms. Harris should have granted an interview to Joe Rogan, the right-leaning host of the world’s most popular podcast, some progressive influencers are now more interested in building up a Rogan of their own…

They are banding together to create their own networks to make content year-round and not just in the final months before elections. Their goal is to eventually forge self-sustaining advocacy groups and networks, a left-wing answer to the nonprofit Turning Point USA or the media company The Daily Wire on the right. But first they need buy-in — and cash — from the Democratic Party’s donors and institutions to compete in the new attention economy, where people’s time is the currency.

Democrats still don’t get it.

It’s hilarious watching Dems completely misunderstand Trump’s podcast strategy

Nelk Boys, Rogan, Theo Von, etc aren’t “right wing” influencers/podcasts. They’re just popular. Trump’s strategy worked bc he and JD Vance acted like normal, interesting humans on popular shows

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) November 29, 2024

That being said, I fully support Dems burning millions of dollars on content like this pic.twitter.com/Wzn1b2mBdq

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) November 29, 2024

The entire mainstream media and 99% of Hollywood are “Democrat influencers” https://t.co/D1BxFjqHHn

— Christina Pushaw (@ChristinaPushaw) November 29, 2024

It’s hilarious to hear Democrats say that they need their own Joe Rogan. They used to have one. His name is Joe Rogan. They pushed him away.

(Image:Source)

The post After Democrats Suffered a Massive Election Loss, Progressive ‘Influencers’ Say the Party Just Needs to Give Them MORE MONEY appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

CNN Host’s Reaction to Tom Homan Comments About Denver Mayor Speaks Volumes (VIDEO)

A few days ago, the Gateway Pundit featured a story about Trump border czar Tom Homan saying that if Denver Mayor Mike Johnston decides to defy federal law on illegal immigration, he’ll go to jail.

This was the exact exchange between Homan and Sean Hannity:

Sean Hannity: Tom, you heard this mayor out there in Colorado. I want to get your reaction to it, and I want you to be clear about who has jurisdiction—the federal government or state and local governments. And if you’re a sanctuary state or city, are you breaking the law?

Tom Homan: You’re absolutely breaking the law. All he has to do is look at Arizona v. United States, and you’ll see he’s breaking the law. Well, look, the Denver mayor and I agree on one thing—he’s willing to go to jail, and I’m willing to put him in jail.

Here’s the video, in case you missed it:

Tom Homan: “Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing: he’s willing to go to jail, I’m willing to put him in jail.” pic.twitter.com/MkrFbxwS9I

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 26, 2024

CNN recently discovered this clip and played it on the air. Host Kasie Hunt had a reaction to this that was hilarious, although we doubt that she meant to be funny.

Nick Arama commented at RedState:

Their ratings are in the dumper, and Trump is reportedly considering shaking up the White House briefing room and including more independent media. CNN just doesn’t know how to deal with the changes that are coming.

They also couldn’t believe that the Trump team was not going to stand for Democrats trying to interfere with the enforcement of the law when it comes to deporting illegal aliens. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said that he would stand in the way of the government’s attempt to deport illegal aliens, and he’d be arrested if he had to. The man Trump nominated to be the border czar, Tom Homan, then said that could potentially be breaking the law and that if he did, he would oblige him being arrested. CNN Kasie Hunt’s reaction was something to see.

Watch below, this is funny:

CNN’s Kasie Hunt visibly stunned after playing a clip of Tom Homan saying he would gladly throw Denver Mayor Mike Johnston in jail for defying Trump’s deportation operation.

This is the best video you will watch all day.

Homan: Me and the Denver mayor agree on one thing. He’s… pic.twitter.com/ab4XMw5GrK

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 28, 2024

The next four years are going to be rough for some people at CNN.

The post CNN Host’s Reaction to Tom Homan Comments About Denver Mayor Speaks Volumes (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.