Writing an epitaph for 2025, the sage of Aspen, Glenn Beaton, compares our President to Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte, and concludes as follows.
Enter Donald Trump. He is not a good man and never will be, but he may prove to be a great man. As in the case of other historical figures, consider his timing, circumstances and luck – and sheer audacity.
I concur. Audacity was a trait much valued by Gen. George Patton.
The year of our Lord 2025 ends at midnight. This year the world has continued to find things over which to fight, with battles raging in Southeast Asia, the subcontinent, multiple places in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the streets of Port au Prince., and on most weekends the streets of Chicago.
President Trump II has exhibited tough love toward Europe. He admonished them to grow up and take responsibility for their neighborhood. They've been whining ever since that we no longer love them.
Biden assured us the leaky southern border could only be secured with amnesty to all illegals. We learned he was lying and stupid. Trump had it fixed in a matter of weeks! Doing so was merely a matter of enforcing existing laws. More than a half million illegals have been deported and another two million have self-deported.
Woke and DEI are mostly on the skids, and under attack in the remaining locations. Tariffs have demonstrated Uncle Sam is no longer willing to be the world's economic patsy. Contrary to frantic predictions, the world hasn't ended in depression.
Folks continue to feel pinched by too-high housing costs, not realizing the 20 million or more illegals still here are competing with them for living space. If we could get even half of those gone, home and rental prices would drop as demand and supply would equalize.
Inflation is under control unemployment isn't particularly high, and gas prices are down a lot. The stock market is near record highs.
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From where the DrsC sit, things aren't bad. We've each had health issues in the past year, miserable to be sure but none were life-threatening.
There is a metaphorical 'bullet' awaiting each of us eventually, and for us seniors in the not-distant future. Nevertheless, in 2025 the two of us dodged ours and we hope to keep doing so for the next few years. Life continues to be interesting, if somewhat less predictable.
I wish you all a very Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year. And a few wonderful surprises to spark joy.
As several sources have reported, actor George Clooney and his celebrity wife Amal Alamuddin have been granted French citizenship. They own a farm in the south of France which they consider their residence-of-record.
As you may recollect, Clooney was very active in Democrat politics leading up the the last presidential election. I would expect him to abstain in future US elections as he no longer lives here and should devote his political attentions to French politics, as an immigrant to that society and an emigre from ours. Presumably he no longer has skin in our game, as other than an interested spectator.
Instapundit links to a ‘CDR Salamander’ column about relations between Taiwan and Japan. (Isn’t that a cute pen name?) The author apparently just discovered something I’ve noted here before, repeatedly.
If you’ve traveled or lived in Asia - I’ve done both - you know the Japanese empire which ended with their defeat in 1945, left behind few friends. Generally they were brutal, cruel conquerors who treated non-Japanese as sub-humans. The one exception to that is Taiwan. I found that exception amazing 39 years ago, apparently it still strikes visitors as peculiar. ‘Salamander’ writes:
A friend of mine recently moved to Japan. He and his Japanese girlfriend vacationed in Taiwan recently. The one thing he noticed was that without fail, if they were trying to talk to someone who could not speak English, his girlfriend would switch to Japanese and, sure enough, they were off and running. To a person, everyone was happy to meet an American and a Japanese.
1. Students stopped learning during COVID. We’ve failed them.
2. Democrats have too often responded to learning loss by lowering standards.
3. We’re losing our best teachers. Lawmakers aren’t doing enough about it.
4. Public schools are as segregated and unequal today as they were before Brown. The problem is worse in Northern and blue cities.
5. The parents of students of color and working-class kids who attend failing schools increasingly blame Democrats.
The article tends to downplay teachers unions as a factor contributing to these problems, I am inclined to assign the unions more blame. With that caveat, I find the article mostly on target and definitely worth your time.
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Another relevant factor for which I can see no handy fixes is this. Equal employment rights for women (which I support) have opened many other opportunities to smart women who once became teachers when that was one of about three pink collar careers (teaching, nursing, clerical) open to them.
Today bright, hard-working women who would once have become teachers are instead becoming attorneys, physicians, airline pilots, professors, and executives. Dumbing down those becoming teachers has had the expected deleterious effect.
Full disclosure: The other DrC is a former excellent public school teacher who became a professor. Academia’s gain was, perforce, K-12’s loss.
I’ve been wondering when I’d see the first tendrils of a movement opposing Artificial Intelligence. Here in Politico is a no-paywall column entitled,
“We have to reject that with every fiber of our being”: DeSantis emerges as a chief AI skeptic.
In the same Politico issue, a second no-paywall column reports Democratic politicians are getting grassroots feedback demanding their opposition to AI.
Frank Herbert predicted a revolt against "thinking machines," his novel Dune (1965) naming it the Butlerian Jihad. When the actual history of our period is written, perhaps these will be cited as harbingers, hints of what’s to come.
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Questions COTTonLINE believes raised by AI: If a machine intelligence commits a crime, can we imprison it? Can we sue it for damages? Is turning its power off the equivalent of capital punishment? At what point does someone’s claim to control it constitute either slavery or employment? We need answers.
I propose that, at a minimum, all AI-generated material be indelibly labeled as such. And that whatever human agency, firm, or individual owns the AI be held responsible for any crimes or torts it commits.
In the post below I label today "Boxing Day," which is what the Brits (and some Commonwealth folk) call the day after Christmas. The term is entirely unrelated to pugilism or fisticuffs.
Dec. 26 is St. Stephen's Day, aka the 'feast of Stephen" upon which King Wenceslas looked down. The origin of the name Boxing Day is unclear, it may refer to the alms box where gifts for the poor could be left, or the box of gifts, food, and/or money given to one's servants and tradespeople.
I’ve written before about the ugly Obama presidential library under construction in Chicago. So have others, and this column actually gives the design’s supposed rationale, about which nothing is obvious or sensible.
My thought concerning this design monstrosity on a Boxing Day morning is that it resembles a keep that lost its castle walls. Given Chicago’s reputation as an every-weekend gangland shooting gallery*, maybe a castle keep isn’t entirely illogical. It should prove mostly impervious to handgun fire.
Later … *Of which this shooting is merely the most recent example.
＆Tuesday marked the 19th anniversary of COTTonLINE. We dropped our first substantive post on December 23, 2006.
I meant to recognize the anniversary on Tuesday but, as you know, things get busy at this time of year. Still, better late than never.
In those nineteen years we’ve posted in excess of sixteen thousand items. Just for fun I’ve looked back at some old posts and they seem to hold up reasonably well. All are still there for us to see.
I suppose you could call what I’ve done here my second career, that of an essayist. I’ve enjoyed the work, making the process indistinguishable from play. I hope you’ve found a few things to enjoy as well, they are my gift to you.
And I wish you a very Merry Christmas. I hope the joyous season finds you in good health and spirits, enjoying the company of kinfolk and friends.
I just finished reading the most sensible appraisal of what drives those who command Russia that I have seen. Written for Real Clear Defense, it argues Russia is best understood as an empire with top down leadership using compulsion to make it work. Its enduring drive is expansion, with everything else subordinate to that urge.
The author harks back to the analysis of George Keenan who held that the only way to deal with Russia is containment via military force. I find the reasoning displayed in this column persuasive, see what you think of it.
We’re going to keep on trying to negotiate. And I think that we’ve made progress, but sitting here today, I wouldn’t say with confidence that we’re going to get to a peaceful resolution. I think there’s a good chance we will, I think there’s a good chance we won’t.
The VP sounds realistic, and his skepticism echoes what we've written here. When the war finally ends one or both of the leaders involved - Putin and Zelensky - may not live to tell the tale, and I bet they fear this.
The Soviet Union was in many ways a theocracy, belief in communism being required and other faiths suppressed. And like many faiths it had missionaries all over the world, preaching the Marx/Lenin gospel.
The US considered the USSR dangerous. The successor state Russia is smaller, not evangelical, and we consider it troublesome but do not fear it.
Today's China is supposedly communist but doesn't work very hard at selling its ideology outside its own boundaries. I suspect they believe non-Chinese are too dumb to understand their system's merits.
However, China has a huge population and a rapidly expanding military. We now consider it dangerous and potentially fearsome.
The evangelical faith endangering us today is militant Islam. It wins some converts, feels free to kill those who won't, and scatters its adherents all over the world. Not precisely an existential societal threat, more of an infestation like fire ants or poison ivy, something to keep out of our society.
Later ... it seems Glenn Beaton of Aspen Beat fame has been thinking about this same set of issues. His treatment is more eloquent but his conclusions don't differ markedly from mine. He perhaps admires China more than I do, but his view of Islam seems right. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.
Last night was the longest night of the year, in the northern hemisphere, 5 pm looked like midnight. The North Pole is leaning as far from the sun as it goes. In the Southern Hemisphere the foregoing is reversed.
Here winter begins today; down south summer begins today. North of the equator we call today the Winter Solstice.
In our nation's great southwestern desert midday today was quite mild, comfortable in a long sleeved shirt. This is our normal winter weather.
Up home in WY there wasn't much snow on the ground when I looked earlier this afternoon. Western WY won't have a white Christmas this year, the high is predicted to be 42℉. That will be weirdly warm for our combination of altitude and latitude.
Historian Victor Davis Hanson asks this question, for RealClearPolitics, “Can the dark ages return?”Spoiler alert, he concludes there is considerable evidence it could do just that.
Hanson marshals the evidence that our Western civilization is exhibiting several of the same signs of decay the late Roman Empire had, before Europe sank into the 500 years of societal retrogression we call the Dark Ages.
I hope you join me in wishing that he is unduly alarmist in this view. Sadly, all our wishing won’t make it so.
Who knew Frank Herbert was a prophet? In his epic doorstop sci fi novel Dune, he relates history from the perspective of roughly 8 thousand years in mankind's future. In that time's far past (our near future), mankind rebelled against thinking machines, destroyed them and banned their manufacture more or less successfully. This war of extermination was called the Butlerian Jihad.
One online source has called what now comes the AI Apocalypse. The current movement to AI or artificial intelligence threatens to replace many current office workers, as well as most factory workers. Expecting no Luddite response is asking too much of people.
And yet, needing acreage, huge hangar-like buildings and enough electricity to power a small city to replace what the human brain can do on 2500 calories a day, clean water, and a place to sleep isn't so very impressive. When you think about it, AI seems downright inefficient.
Just because we can build AI is not a necessary justification for why we should do so. However we may have no choice because our near-peer adversary China is doing so.
I have a fun article for you to read, it's from Motor Trend, link provided by Instapundit. The author took a 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser with roof rack tent on a roundtrip drive from the Los Angeles area to the end of the road at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. His wife joined him for roughly the last 60% of the drive. They tented much of the way with hotel rooms in a few places. It is a good read.
He drove really far each day and did the roundtrip in 18 days. He saw a lot of wildlife, fed more than a few large mosquitoes, and found the vehicle reliable and comfortable if something of a gas hog.
In my heyday some decades ago I'd have taken 6 weeks to 2 months and driven fewer miles each day. I'd also choose ideally to do it in a one ton pickup with a camper, no tenting for me.
When the other DrC and I drove the Alaskan Highway sometime in the early 1980s little was paved until you got to Alaska. the Dawson Highway wasn't open then and Fairbanks was as far north as we got. We did it in a small class C motorhome and it was an adventure for sure. To learn more about our RV adventures up north, search "Muncho Lake" on the website's Search feature.
Can Europe defend itself against a Russian threat? Are there any significant number of young men there who are willing to fight and die for "Europe?" Writing for The European Conservative, Javier Villamor believes the answer to those questions is "no."
He argues post World War II history shows, when things get ugly, European nations have tended to go their own individual ways. The EU project has been a way to "paper over" the differences by ignoring the will of the various peoples of the continent. It has not created a European patriotism or identity, which lack he believes is intentional.
He likens EU promises to spend money on defense to a sort of modern Maginot Line, and believes it will be as ineffective, in the absence of a "will to fight." Villamor's view in one sentence:
Dying for one’s country is one thing; dying for Brussels is quite another.
The New York Daily News reports FBI Deputy Director and former media personality Dan Bongino will be leaving that post soon to return to broadcasting. His acquaintances are not surprised, he's not been happy in the role.
I’ve been thinking about the persistent attraction of socialism in the face of so many examples of it not working. It reminds me of the sort of ‘magical’ thinking in Peter Pan where Peter turns to the children in the audience and says something to the effect of “if you believe in her, clap your hands and Tinker Bell will live.”
Socialism's supporters asks us to believe in the human selflessness required for it to work. Magical thinking is fine in a happy fantasy like Peter Pan. It is absolute crap as an organizing principle for economic life.
Most of us aren’t selfless saints. If ‘sainthood’ were common, we wouldn’t prize it so highly but would take it as a given, as socialism implicitly does.
We are the descendants of thousands of generations of humans who selfishly took their personal and family survival seriously. Expect that, not sainthood, to be our default setting.
We harness and channel that selfishness with societal constraints - laws, rules, systems - to keep it from turning into banditry, and the result is capitalism, based on markets where people exchange value for value in swaps that benefit both parties.
Taking us as we are, instead of as some would wish us to be, is why capitalism works and produces rising standards of living.
The emergence of a new National Security Strategy reflecting a reduced US commitment to European affairs brings a pithy comment from foreign policy wonk George Friedman. Check it out.
We are now at the point where Europe as a whole must decide what it is to be. Inaction is certainly a decision. The Continent must recognize that being European is a meaningless phrase if Europe is merely the name of an inherently vulnerable and unstable geopolitical region. Or it can choose to be a great power itself.
History indicates that the most likely result is that Europe will continue as it is, becoming one of the most dangerous things a nation can be: rich but weak and vulnerable. This was the choice at the end of World War II, and it is the question Europe has refused to answer ever since. Now that U.S. interests have changed, Europe faces the crisis it has tried to evade for the past 80 years
For PJ Media, Stephen Green writes about solving our societal problems. It is oversimplified but brilliant.
Everything really is going to hell. But only because the most capable, innovative, and powerful people in the history of the world chose to allow it.
We can choose differently. It requires just four steps, very broadly defined — and only three of them require actually doing anything.
Here they are:
- Institutionalize the crazies.
- Lock up the criminals.
- Blow up the terrorists.
- And leave the rest of us alone to enjoy our liberty and pursue our happiness.
Easier said than done, for sure. But as the outline of a plan, I like it a lot.
Chile has elected Jose Antonio Kast as President; virtually every legacy media outlet calls him far-right. He is more conservative than any president elected since the Pinochet era, favoring such things as toughness on crime, controlling immigration, and expelling illegal immigrants.
Both members of the "Southern Cone" now have conservative leaders. Argentina already has Javier Milei as their leader. As you might expect, we wish both of them well.
Shootings at Bondi Beach in Australia, planned bombings in Los Angeles, attacks on Christmas markets in Germany, France cancelling their New Years Eve concert fearing violence, attacking a concert in Amsterdam, the twin towers, San Bernardino and so many more. All these things have something in common, what that might be is obvious.
The perps in all of these share one characteristic, one belief: that killing non-believers is pleasing to God. Connect the dots, see the pattern, spur our government to act to protect us from those acting out this Thuggish belief.
After all, how many murderous examples do we need to get over our squeamishness? Our fear of being called "murder cult-phobic?"
With regard to the shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island, several have raised questions about how they could arrest someone as a “person of interest” and then release him. They detained a youngish man who had driven there from Wisconsin and had two handguns in his hotel room.
My guess is ballistics showed the bullets fired on campus didn’t come from his weapons. Or a trace of his cell phone whereabouts showed he wasn’t on campus during the shooting. Or even checking his alibi found he had a lawful reason to travel to RI. Any of those could signal “cut him loose.”
Detectives claim not to believe in coincidences, but if pressed will admit they occur.
