I’ve never had much use for diplomats, nor did my father, who called them gigolos and freeloaders living high on the hog off taxpayers like him. “Except for George Kennan,” I used to tell him, and Dad would reluctantly agree. For any of you young whippersnappers unfamiliar with George Kennan, he was the author of America’s Cold War policy of “containment,” in which the U.S. would try to constrain the expansion of communism after World War II without confronting a nuclear Soviet Union directly. In a famous Long Telegram as America’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, Kennan articulated his containment policy in 1946 and in subsequent pseudonymous articles in Foreign Affairs. The idea made him famous among those who wanted peace with the Russian Bear, and even with warmongers who were aware of the price a nuclear war would cost.

George Kennan died at age 105, depriving us of his conclusions about Western involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Kennan held a fascination for the Russian language and culture, and thought of the modernity of his native America “the world’s spiritual and intellectual dunce.” Kennan’s unorthodox view of the Cold War showed great wisdom and restraint, and if anyone’s opinion is badly needed nowadays, it is his. (Another trait I greatly admired was Kennan’s unrelenting womanizing, as well as his ability to stay happily married for over sixty years.)

“The world is closer to a nuclear confrontation than it has been in decades, and with it the potential for billions to perish.”

How badly needed is a Kennan view regarding Russia today? The answer is: very, very badly. Let’s begin with the worst scenario, a nuclear confrontation. The world is closer to one than it has been in decades, and with it the potential for billions to perish. Just think of it, billions of human beings are roasted in a massive fireball in heat so intense that concrete surfaces explode, metal evaporates, and humans convert into carbon. The heat is millions of degrees hotter than the center of the sun. And yet we keep arming Zelensky, Macron the warrior is thinking of sending troops to fight the Russkies, and Putin sits back knowing full well that if pushed beyond a certain point he will not hesitate to you-know-what. Over on our side I think of the brain-dead race-hustling Kamala; Biden, the elderly used-car salesman; and then of my two children and four grandchildren—and I lose sleep. Our government rushed us into the nuclear age without giving extensive thought to whether this would end human civilization. Until today humanity has been lucky, no one has attempted to nuke an enemy; but now we are pressing our luck.

So here I am, sitting in my Park Avenue flat thinking of what might go up in smoke—Budapest in the spring, lovers on the banks of the Seine, golden skyscrapers on Fifth Avenue, the Lincoln Memorial in D.C.—and blaming poor old Uncle Sam for the carnage in Ukraine instead of the bad old bald guy Putin. Well, although you might not like it, let me try: The good uncle bears significant responsibility for U.S.-Russian relations, now scraping the bottom of Cold War hostility. Deluded by post-Soviet weakness, the good Uncle Sam grew oblivious to Russia’s sense of its historical self: Russia has a deeply ingrained self-perception as a great power, coupled with a great insecurity over its long and mostly indefensible borders. Post–Cold War American administrations aspired to transform Russia into a free-market democracy. What took place, instead, was a kleptocracy under Yeltsin in which some Americans made a bundle until Putin finally put his foot down.

The problem was that George Baker, secretary of state under George Bush—and a decent and honest civil servant—had promised Gorbachev that NATO would not “move one inch eastward” if Gorby played ball while dismantling the Soviet Union. Well, Baker’s successors have managed to move more than an inch eastward and now surround Russia’s western borders.

The other important stumbling block in the Uncle Sam versus the Russian Bear contest is the absolute refusal of American governments to understand or agree to Russia’s aspirations. During the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Tsar Alexander and Russia dominated the proceedings, and only the wiles of Metternich and Talleyrand managed to keep him from turning Poland into a Russian province and along with that large parts of Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian empire.

More than 200 years later, American politicians and diplomats view Russia as a lumbering, way-past-it small power, forgetting that Putin can blow us up probably more so than we can blow him up. Russia’s autocratic regime is natural, Russians have never tasted real democracy, and perhaps that is why they love their country more than we do. But that’s no reason not to enjoy constructive relations with us, nor need we be impeccable foes.

Back in 2008, William Burns wrote to the State Department as ambassador to Moscow that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russians and for Putin.” What was America’s response? The America that had invaded the Middle East three times in the last thirty years? Total dismissal. Saddam turned out to be a pussy without a nuke; Putin is no pussy and has lotsa nukes. You the readers make up your mind and tell the geniuses in D.C. to stop the bull and tell Zelensky to start talking.

My anthology Noticing is coming out in paperback this week from Passage Press for $29.95.

Please buy it.

Also, I’m continuing my book tour with a speaking event in Los Angeles this Friday evening, before stops in Austin, New College in Sarasota, Fla., the West Virginia exurbs of Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Here are my public speaking engagements (usual ticket price $45):

Friday, March 29, 2024: Los Angeles
Friday, April 12, 2024: Austin
Tuesday, April 23, 2024: Sarasota, Fla.
Friday, May 3, 2024: New York City (may be sold out)

And here are Frequently Asked Questions about my book:

Q. Where are you speaking in Los Angeles this Friday evening?

A. In central Los Angeles near multiple freeways, i.e., not in Santa Monica or Pasadena.

Q. Yes, but where?

A. When you buy a ticket and prove you aren’t some violent Antifa maniac who hates the First Amendment, you’ll be informed of the precise address by email.

Q. Wait a minute: Are you concerned about criminal violence and are taking precautions against it?

“There are advantages to buying Noticing over randomly reading me online: We picked out my best stuff.”

A. Of course. This is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s 21st-century America. Similarly, in April I’ll be speaking at the VDARE spring conference at the Brimelows’ fortified compound in West Virginia in the exurbs of Washington, D.C.

Q. Great! When is that?

A. Well, that’s a secret. You see, in contrast to Passage Press, where they tell you up front the date but not the address, VDARE tells you the address but not the date. It’s in their Castle 80 miles northwest of Dulles airport. But they won’t tell you when it is until you’ve contacted them and proved your bona fides.

Q. That’s insane that your sponsors need to keep secret when or where you are speaking! What kind of country are we living in where an insightful public intellectual like yourself can’t give a speech without these kinds of elaborate precautions against totalitarian thugs?

A. A screwed-up one, obviously. For example, if you read my works, such as—have I mentioned?—my new collection Noticing: An Essential Steve Sailer Reader: 1973–2023, you will notice that I am perhaps America’s most thoughtful and public-spirited essayist. But that, precisely, is what drives proponents of the conventional wisdom wild with rage. They can’t out-argue me, so they try to out-threaten me.

The notion that an author on his book tour must be the Bad Guy while the goons threatening me with violence must be the Good Guys—after all, why would violence-loving ideological fanatics threaten to do me violence if not for my evilness?—is, of course, nuts. But hey, it’s the 2020s, so what are you going to do?

Q. Will there be a digital version of Noticing?

A. No. The publishers love books as physical objects, which is why they lavish so much care in designing and making them. Conversely, they are bored by and disdainful of virtual books. And after a brief fad for ebooks when they were first introduced, the market has largely come to agree with my purist publishers (except for romance novels, where digital dominates), with about seven out of eight nonfiction books now sold being traditional rather than digital.

Q. Will there be an audio version?

A. Hopefully. If the paperback sells well, we’ll likely do a version you can listen to in the car and on the treadmill.

Q. Wait a minute, I thought you said Passage Publishing loves physical books.

A. Well, I’d guess that an audio book is so different from a traditional book that it justifies itself (although it’s also not a priority).

Presumably, I’d do the narration myself because I know what’s sarcasm, what’s a joke, and so forth. On the other hand, I seldom listen to audiobooks myself, so I would have to study up on the tricks of the trade employed by expert professionals. People who narrate books for a living are much better at it than I am at present. Therefore, all this is still tentative and a ways off.

Q. How is the expensive hardcover selling?

A. Surprisingly well. The lavish leather-bound hardcover edition came out late last year for $395(!), and they have already sold a sizable majority of the 500 copies printed.

Passage Press is the result of a merger between two start-up publishers with different orientations: one toward making fine physical books, one toward publishing fine authors who aren’t getting published elsewhere. So they came up with a business model of publishing a lovely hardcover at an eyebrow-raising price and then publishing a well-made paperback at a not cheap but also not unreasonable price.

Q. Why should I pay for a Steve Sailer greatest-hits collection when most of the material in the book once appeared on the internet for free and much of it is still out there somewhere?

A. Good question. While I could point out that some of the text is not available on the internet and other essays are increasingly hard to find due to the decline of Google and Bing, in truth, the answer seems to be mostly a personal one.

For example, at the opening of my book tour at a dinner party in the mountains above Malibu, guests—all buyers of the exorbitantly priced hardback—seemed to get a kick out of competing over who had been reading me longest, with the winning date being way back in 1997.

Q. So, if they’d been reading you for up to 27 years, why would they buy a book of your essays for $29.95, much less for $395?

A. A lot of people seem to really like books. I can’t blame them: The spread of books is likely why the last 575 years have been a whole lot better than the 575 years before then.

The fact that you can keep a book without fear that the powerful will suddenly delete it from your electronic device is appealing. As T.S. Eliot summed up:

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Or, you can read Noticing in bed with all your glowing screens turned off, and with less of an urge than when online to check Twitter to see if somebody is wrong on the internet.

Wait…

Okay, several people on the WWW were wrong, but I’ve now set them straight.

Problem solved!

Where were we? Oh, yeah, some people like owning books that can’t be deleted. Others don’t care.

And some people like reading books without being distracted by X or whatever Twitter is currently called.

Also, you can give Noticing to somebody. For instance, if you’ve been telling your nephew for years that perhaps I’m onto something, giving him a copy of my anthology puts the onus on him to either notice all the ideas I’ve come up with over the decades or to admit that he hasn’t read your gift.

Seriously, Noticing makes a good graduation gift.

And there are advantages to buying Noticing over randomly reading me online: We picked out my best stuff.

For example, even at 468 pages, there was only room for one movie review. But, then again, it’s the movie I’ve probably thought the hardest about over the past half century, and in my review of it two weeks after 9/11, I accurately predicted both the victorious short-term and disastrous long-term course of a major American war. Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael were good reviewers, but how often did they accomplish that?

The editorial selections tend to be weighted toward my seminal works from, say, 1994 to 2006 (which are often not easy to find online these days) to give a sense of my development as a thinker.

Q. What are you going to do for your next book?

A. I don’t know. There are several options. I’d like your opinions.

For example, I could do a Volume 2 of Noticing: My Next Best Stuff. While that may sound pretty dire, I’ve actually written a lot of good things over the decades, so a collection of my less than most fundamental works would be, on average, close to as high quality as my current book. A Volume 2 wouldn’t be quite as fundamental as the new book—have I mentioned that the current book that you can order right now for $29.95 is awfully good?—but it would be one of the better books of 2025.

Or I could do an anthology of my essays oriented toward a particular topic, such as movies or sports or the Great Awokening.

What would you pay $31.95 for in 2025?

Or I could write a book of new material on a topic such as the Grand Strategy of the Democratic Party.

But writing original prose sounds like hard work.

Q. Does anybody else like your new book?

A. Yes. For example, Tucker Carlson wrote:

If the meritocracy were real, Steve Sailer would be one of the most famous writers in the world. Someday, historians will revere him. In the meantime, read this book.

Charles Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve, noted:

I have been reading Steve Sailer for more than twenty years. He is that rare columnist who tells you things you need to know, prompts you to rethink your positions, and has a long record of being right on the big issues. I hope Noticing introduces him to the broader audience he deserves.

Anna Khachiyan, cohost of Red Scare, blurbs:

If I had my way, Steve Sailer would be a household name. Now that his greatest hits are finally under one roof, it’s easier than ever to imagine a reality where he is.

British opinion journalist Ed West explains:

Who is this Steve Sailer? I’ve certainly never read this controversial writer with his “human biodiversity” theories which I’m sure I completely condemn. Please don’t destroy my career!

Sailer is probably the most influential conservative thinker that most of you haven’t heard of, or at least pretend you haven’t heard of. All the best writers read and absorb his ideas, and he is the figure who most comes up at the more intellectual gatherings of conservatives.

Sailer has consistently produced interesting content down the years, and is not afraid—I mean, that’s an understatement—to explore any theory. In this sense he comes from the finest tradition of independent-minded Anglo-American free inquiry, even if he is unfortunate that he lives in an age where his ideas are most offensive. Most of all what I like about Sailer is that he’s interested in knowing stuff, because knowing things is fun and interesting.

His political views are probably a huge hindrance to financial and career success, and yet he has treated the most obvious dishonesty from opponents, and the enrichment of ideological drones and frauds, with good humour, all in a way in which Rudyard Kipling would have approved.

Razib Khan writes:

It is hard not to notice that Steve Sailer is like the dark matter of American punditry; present only through influence.

Scott Greer:

In a world where we’re not supposed to notice obvious truths, Steve Sailer made his career uncovering this forbidden knowledge in workman-like style. Noticing presents Sailer at his best, arguing for inconvenient facts with data, common sense, and wit. It’s a must-read for those with the eyes to see the real nature of modern America.

Bo Winegard of Aporia:

Steve Sailer is easily one of the most influential modern thinkers, which is remarkable given that he is constantly calumnied by the mainstream press and other activists. “Noticing,” a bountiful book of Steve’s best essays, is a reminder to all of us who write about human biological diversity: When you think you’ve had an original thought, check Steve’s writings because he probably had it first. Written with clarity and panache, each of the essays is a small treasure; and the book is a veritable trove. Anybody who wants to understand the modern world should read it. Then start noticing.

J. Michael Bailey, professor of psychology at Northwestern U., articulates:

Since the 1990s Steve Sailor has noticed and written about a greater number of interesting and important things than almost any tenured social scientist. Make that most university social science departments. Through it all, he has engaged his nemesis—the War on Noticing—with admirable alacrity. In so many fraught arenas he has earned the right to say: “I told you so.” That is one way to read this volume, but Sailor would likely prefer elevations in honest observation and reasoning. Noticing includes some classics that inspired me, such as “Why Lesbians Aren’t Gay.” Enjoy.

Charlie Kirk enthuses:

In modern America, there is no greater offense than the crime of “noticing,” and no man has been a more prolific offender than Steve Sailer. If you don’t read Steve, then you don’t know how America actually works.

John Derbyshire:

Collected from thirty years of Steve Sailer’s print and online commentary, here is realism about human nature and human society from the keyboard of a first-class quantitative journalist expressing himself with clarity, vigor, and wit. All who resent the tyranny of wishful thinking and academic log-rolling in the human sciences should own this book.

Helen Andrews:

Steve Sailer is a friendly guide to the most contentious topics of our time. The way he has maintained his cheerful good humor for decades while the rest of the world has gone crazy—and craziest of all on the subjects he knows best—is amazing.

So, a whole lot of smart people like my compendium, which—have I mentioned?—you can now purchase for $29.95.

Race sentimentalism is a favorite topic of mine. Having attended majority-black L.A. public schools in the 1980s, and having lived the best years of my life while doing so, I myself am prone to sentimentalism regarding black/white relations, especially after a few drinks (i.e., every waking moment of my day).

Whether it’s mainstream conservative sentimentality—“blacks have been wronged by the government via welfare and lowered expectations, but with enough flag pins, bibles, and Sowell books, this great people will stop killing us”—or far-right sentimentality—“whites and nigras is both bein’ used by the Jews! If we gits free o’ the kikes, we kin all prosper”—the sentimentality is always there.

At the heart of rightist race sentimentality is the avoidance of admitting an intractable problem: the inability of black America to rise from the mire (I’m not speaking individually, of course, as there’s no shortage of high-functioning blacks who rise just fine. I’m speaking collectively, the great mass of black unsalvageables). There’s not much political DNA separating race-sentimental rightists from the race-sentimental leftists who support Soros. “If we just stop imprisoning blacks who commit crimes, they’ll learn to like us and won’t be hostile anymore! It’s like earning the trust of a feral dog. Open palm, let him sniff you, show him you’re no threat.”

“Tucker Carlson’s taken a Neil Armstrong-size step off the sanity cliff in his pursuit of race sentimentality.”

Sound silly? Well, yeah, but is it any dumber than thinking that flag pins and Sowell books can tame ghetto curs? Race sentimentality is escapism, a dream that an intractable problem has an easy solution (or any solution).

Even literal David Duke—and in a world in which every rightist is at one time or another called a figurative David Duke, it’s important to remember that there exists a literal David Duke—is a race sentimentalist regarding blacks. A boy of the Old South, he envisions a day in which blacks and whites can both prosper—separately but equally—the Jew long exterminated.

Back in my youthful years, when I was in deep with very far-rightists, the one guy I refused to have any contact with was Michael Hoffman, the conspiracy wacko and Holocaust denier. Hoffman had cheered mass murderers James Huberty (who shot 21 Mexicans at a McDonald’s in 1984) and Patrick Purdy (the brave Aryan warrior who gunned down Asian schoolgirls playing jump rope in 1989) as “the best of the white race.” I rarely get offended, but Hoffman found a way. Yet even he—even this guy who celebrated Huberty’s sniper headshot to a Mexican baby—had race sentimentality toward blacks. In Hoffman’s 1988 book Candidate for the Order, the heroic white protagonist who goes on a Jew-killing rampage enlists the help of a proud black separatist. It’s like a buddy cop film, but…darker. Think Lethal Weapon but Murtaugh and Riggs shoot up a Jewish senior center.

And now Tucker Carlson’s taken a Neil Armstrong-size step off the sanity cliff in his pursuit of race sentimentality. Last week Tuck hosted as his “honored guest” Omali Yeshitela (real name Joseph Waller), the “chairman” of the African People’s Socialist Party, also known as the Uhuru cult. The Uhurus, based in St. Petersburg, Florida, but with “chapters” in St. Louis, Philly, and Oakland, believe in violent revolution against whites.

I’ve been covering Yeshitela since the early 2000s; allow me to share some of the wisdom of Tuck’s “honored guest.”

Yeshitela, via his newspaper The Burning Spear, has repeatedly told his followers to shoot at police helicopters and attack cops if they’re arresting a black person.

In order to stop the police from hurting members of the community, people threw rocks and bottles at police to cover people’s escape from the police attack. As the night went on AK-47 fire could be heard as shots were taken at the police helicopter. Other skirmishes with police were reported throughout the night. There is a long pattern and history of police murdering African people all across the U.S. There is not a recent pattern however, of a righteously militant response to such murders—except in St. Petersburg, Florida, the headquarters of the Uhuru Movement and the growing resistance to U.S. imperialism and colonialism within U.S. borders.

In every instance of police murder since the 1996 killing of 18-year-old TyRon Lewis, the justice that the African community has been denied in the courts, has been fought for in the streets. During the rebellions of 1996, which spanned two months, everyday African youth, who were called the “ghostfaces” because they covered their faces with t-shirts and bandannas, shot down a helicopter, burned police substations, media vehicles and anything that represented white power. The masses of people also opened fire on a battle group of 300 police. The ferocity of the community’s organized and calculated strikes against U.S. police troops represents the cutting edge of resistance to a dying but not yet dead North American system of imperialism and colonialism. (The Burning Spear, June 2005)

Yeshitela published an entire book about why white genocide in South Africa is necessary. Regarding “Uncle Tom” blacks who argue against murdering white children, Yeshitela wrote:

Anybody who’s running around saying, “Oh, please stop killing each other” is a problem. Anybody on the side of the oppressor must die! Must die! Must die! (The Struggle in South Africa Is for Black Power)

Regarding a local pastor’s charge that Yeshitela was inciting violence in the community, including straight-out advocating the murder of cops:

We’ve heard these charges coming from Murphy’s church and other negroes that the Uhurus are trying to incite something. They say that after they killed someone in our community, we put out these flyers in an attempt to incite something. They’re right. They’re right because the people need to be incited and excited about murder in our community. People need to be. So we say they will pay a price, and we want you excited by this. We want you incited to do something about this. (The Burning Spear, June 2005)

In March 2009 Lovelle Mixon brutally murdered four Oakland police officers. Yeshitela praised “brother Lovelle” and taunted the victims’ families by publishing a poem that mocked the slain officers.

African people in Oakland have a right to struggle against this government-imposed terror. This is exactly what our brother Lovelle Mixon did. Even if Mixon was not political, he took a righteous stand of resistance to police terror in a community—see: colony—controlled by the police—see: occupying army. Mixon was of the community, and should be remembered.

‘Velle’s name will ring in the street: A legend.
‘Velle Mixon, y’all listen, this is bigger than fiction;
‘Velle went out in a blaze of glory. He said he ain’t going back, Brrrrrat! Brrrrrrat!”
One pig, two pig, laying on the ground;
three pigs, four pigs, I bet they know now.
He knocked them down in an orderly fashion;
so now they hate the Mixons in an orderly passion.
(The Burning Spear, March 2010)

Regarding mass murderer Omar Thornton, a black “disgruntled employee” who gunned down eight coworkers in Manchester, Connecticut, on Aug. 3, 2010, because “they wuz racists,” Yeshitela cheered the killer and blamed the white victims:

In the end, Brother Omar took his own life, they say. And, if this is the case, he was not to give the Colonial police or the Colonialist court the opportunity to legally murder him by bullet or death chamber. The idea that he could have escaped was apparently not included in his justice seeking plans, although it should have been. According to reports, Brother Omar called his mother after shooting his predetermined antagonists, telling her, “I shot the racists that were bothering me.”

According to the white ruling class media outlet, Associated Press of August 5, which appeared in the Houston Chronicle, “Friends and Family of those who died said they couldn’t imagine their loved ones doing what Thornton said, and the company and union said Thornton never reported any harassment.” Well, as someone from Alcoholics Anonymous would say to an alcoholic who refuse to believe they have an addiction: you are in denial. By the same token, there are very few colonials who admit they are anti-black racist.

They both reap material rewards; the alcoholic more whiskey, wine, and beer. And the colonial, more vacations, more cars, and more luxury homes, and the convenience of not going to prison, no matter what crimes they commit. They have the luxury of not being shot down in the streets and in their homes by the different U.S. police agencies.

LONG LIVE OMAR THORTON (sic)

LONG LIVE MARK ESSEX!

(Mark Essex was a black mass murderer who went on a killing spree targeting whites in New Orleans in 1972.)

Yeshitela calls white people “parasitism on the body of humanity” (The Burning Spear, September 1991). Asians are also not spared his wrath; he’s defended the ransacking and burning of Korean-owned stores as “rightful rebellion”:

In Philadelphia every major neighborhood shopping area is controlled by parasitic merchants, mostly Koreans…. Korean merchants and the sell-out Latino store owners who greedily suck the resources from the community daily were the rightful targets of the rebellion. (The Burning Spear, July 1991)

So why the alliance with Tucker? Well, first of all, the Uhuru cult manifesto is the mirror image of the MAGA manifesto.

We don’t believe that we can win our freedom by voting. We are going to have to fight our way out of here. (The Burning Spear, July 2006)

That’s the January 6 creed. Here we see the brotherhood of macho-bullshit losers who can’t win elections because they alienate voters with their reality-detached rhetoric.

Yeshitela hates Israel, denies the Holocaust, and believes in an overarching conspiracy of “deep staters” keeping the black man down. He and Tuck were destined to become buds. Indeed, this is not the first time the right’s flirted with a Yeshitela alliance. In 2010, Yeshitela came as close as you can to publicly calling for the assassination of a president. At a D.C. rally, he said of Obama:

He’s a murdering tyrant. Even if you’re not strong enough to stop him, you have to call him a dirty so-and-so, and you have to say it so that people can hear you, so that when the people get ready to move, you’ve already told them it’s alright to move. That’s why we’re out here now. The fuse is the most powerful part of a stick of dynamite. Well, we are the fuse, right here. We are the fuse, and we are on fire! We are on fire! You have to make the hard choices. You have to take people where they didn’t even know they were supposed to go, and you have to have the GUTS to tell them that Barack Hussein Obama is the ENEMY. If you don’t say that, people might be confused. They might think you like him. And if they like you, they won’t want to do anything to him, because they think that you like him. So you have to say, “you have our permission…to do what has to be done.” Okay, I don’t wanna talk about this too much because I’ll go to jail.

And immediately the mouthbreathers at Breitbart were like, “Hooray! A black leader we can champion.” And I had to explain to those toddlers that (a) killing presidents is bad even if you don’t like ’em, and (b) Yeshitela also wants to kill whites and cops, so maybe don’t encourage these beasts.

Breitbart actually backed off. In them days, folks listened to ol’ Dave.

So back to Tuck and his Yeshitela lovefest. On his Twitter show, Tuck claimed that the Uhurus were the “one political group in the United States” willing to “speak the truth” about Russia and Ukraine. And therefore, the deep state raided the Uhuru compound, to stop them from “spreading truth.”

In fact, a grand jury indicted the Uhuru cultists for conspiring with a foreign power. Is the case sound? I’ve no idea; it’ll play out and we’ll see. But the charge isn’t “speaking the truth.” The charge is that three Russian foreign agents, Aleksandr Ionov, Aleksey Sukhodolov, and Yegor Popov, enlisted the Uhurus for domestic political mischief in the black community on behalf of Russian intelligence. And, as someone who’s been covering these nuts for almost twenty years, I can tell you that this is right up the Uhuru alley. In 2010 the Uhurus partnered with expelled Venezuelan government operative Marcos Garcia to serve as a mouthpiece for Hugo Chavez. You do that shit long enough—allying with foreign agents—eventually the government might take notice.

But again, the current indictment will play out as it will. My interest is Tucker’s fawning interview with cop-killing advocate Yeshitela. Tuck called him “wise,” even as Yeshitela boasted about bringing down a police helicopter with ground fire. He repeatedly said “amen” as Yeshitela listed his grievances against whites. The two blood brothers talked about having dinner together, as Yeshitela declared the importance of liberating “occupied Palestine” “from the river to the sea.”

At one point in the interview, Tuck and Yeshitela yukked it up about how the phrase “black lives matter” is “a whine not a demand,” a “weak call to arms.”

You know what Yeshitela’s preferred phrase is? “Kill the police.” Not “defund the police,” but “kill the police.” He’s repeated it many times, in print.

Tuck forgot to tell you that.

At the end of the interview, Tuck said to Yeshitela, “I hope this is seen far and wide…I’m grateful. Godspeed, and thank you.”

“Godspeed and thank you” to the “kill the police” guy.

Keep in mind, the federal indictment against the Uhurus is a year old. It’s from April 2023, but Tuck’s only talking about it now.

Why?

Because MAGA is at peak horseshoe theory. All that matters is to champion any enemies of the “deep state,” the vile octopus that so torments god-king Trump.

Any enemies, “enemies” being defined as anyone prosecuted anywhere for anything. That’s why Kevin Spacey is Tuck’s new buddy, and why a black nationalist cult that wants to kill cops is Tuck’s new cause célèbre.

Tuck’s a “prison abolitionist” just as Yeshitela is, he simply presents it differently. The Yeshitela (and Soros) position is that anyone put on trial or sent to prison by “the man” must be released because the very foundation of “the man’s” justice system is so irredeemably biased, if “the man” comes after you, you’re a de facto victim of persecution. Now take that preceding sentence and replace “the man” with “the deep state” and that’s Tuck’s position.

MAGA rightists will sink the crime issue, because they’re so easily manipulable, they can champion a guy who chants “kill the police” because that guy is an enemy of the “deep state” and it matters not how many of your moms or daughters are killed by street thugs; once we’ve caught and defeated Baron Rothschild XVIII, peace will come to the land.

Ironically, after the 2020 election Tucker approvingly shared a column of mine in which I counseled rightists to stick to meat-and-potatoes issues like crime (issues that are visible to voters) and not abandon them for “sleuthing” invisible foes that voters can’t see.

And now, almost four years later, Tuck’s teaming up with a “kill the police” black extremist to fight the malevolent force only they can see.

Shows you how effective my words are.

The most telling part of the Tuck/Yeshitela interview was when the latter condemned Biden for his tough-on-crime positions in the 1990s and the former nodded like a retarded drinky bird.

Yep, the thing that worked, the 1990s tough-on-crime policies that saved L.A., are to be mocked, because we have Rothschilds to hunt and cop killers to collaborate with.

I hate cribbing my sign-offs from previous columns, but what choice do I have? This is the sign-off that defines the moment.

What a mess…what a fucking mess.

What even is “mental health” these days? Apparently, it is now best defined as a teenage child turning up to school dressed as a giraffe.

You may be aware of the lamentable phenomenon of “furries,” those clearly disturbed individuals who self-identify as animals. A typical example would be this absurd and pathetic young Norwegian girl named Nano who thinks that, due to “a genetic defect,” she is a cat born in a human body, and so crawls around on all fours, communicates via purring, sleeps in a sink, dresses in fuzzy ears and paws, and claims to possess both super-hearing and the supposed ability to see in the dark. Tellingly, she has proved thus far unable to catch any mice, though, these rodents being much too fast for her actually 100 percent human senses.

You would think that, as possessing “good mental health” is one of the chief mantras of the Oprah Winfrey Health Dictatorship that now rules over us, today’s governing class would be eager to disabuse misguided little girls like Nano of their delusions—yet in our Human Zoo era of transsexual self-ID, why not have trans-species self-ID too? Online furry advocacy groups, like furscience.com, today give the genuine “mental health advice” to concerned schoolchildren that, if they are being bullied at school for being excessively tall, they might like to begin to self-ID as giraffes, thereby to take ownership of the whole situation and restore their state of innate psychological well-being.

Normal, non-mad individuals may easily perceive that telling a bullied beanpole to start turning up to school dressed as Geoffrey the Giraffe from the old Toys “R” Us adverts is more likely to cause further bullying than to end it—but no matter. These days, being psychologically normal is increasingly being redefined by identity-politics freaks as a sign of outright social insanity.

“Possessing a debilitating disorder has now been redefined as an essential identitarian fashion accessory.”

Asylum Seekers
Possessing a debilitating disorder has now been redefined as an essential identitarian fashion accessory. Which mental aberration is “in” this year? OCD? Tourette’s? Compulsive coprophagy?

Apparently, the current psychological condition du jour is autism, according to a new report from a pair of London clinicians, Anthony David, of University College, and Quinton Deeley, of King’s College, which warns that, since 1998, there has been a ninefold increase in autism diagnoses across the U.K.

Do many such new patients genuinely have autism, however, or have they just been groomed to think they have, thereby stealing away scarce medical resources from those genuine sufferers who actually need it? In recent years, just like gender, autism has been over-generously redefined not as a discrete psychological state, but as something that exists “on a spectrum”…you know, just like gender suddenly does in the eyes of leftist queer ideologues.

David and Deeley note that having a condition like autism or Asperger’s (the mild form of the ailment), or even being outright mentally ill or cognitively impaired, has been arbitrarily rebranded under the positive term “neurodiversity”—so, for example, a child who turns up to school dressed as a giraffe is just an excellent example of furry neurodiversity in action, rather than a complete nutcase who needs his or her neck snapping immediately for the good of wider normative society.

Forget “neurodiversity,” the authors suggest this trend should perhaps in fact be rechristened “neurophilia.”

Analyze This
There are plenty of apps out there nowadays that allow people to (mis)diagnose themselves with autism very easily, the doctors observe, the condition being defined loosely anew as a mere constellation of common generic behavioral traits—not enjoying social situations, for instance, finding small talk difficult, or enjoying regular, clockwork routines. In the past, such qualities would merely have been termed “being a bit awkward,” but no longer.

Now all kinds of celebrities have self-diagnosed themselves as autistic via an app store, and millions of proles are minded, lemming-like, to follow suit: It is estimated 700,000 adults in the U.K., and 5.4 million in the U.S., now enjoy an autism diagnosis, official or otherwise. Online “autism influencers” make money proudly broadcasting intimate awkward details of their lives to millions of strangers, coaching them that they too can have something very, very wrong with them—if only they have the courage to stand up and self-diagnose themselves so!

As with the current queer campaign to rewrite history by saying people like Churchill and Nelson were secretly gay or trans, various luminaries of the past, real and fictional, are also now being retrospectively “outed” as old-time “Auties,” too: Newton, Darwin, Mozart, Einstein, Jefferson, Tesla, Sherlock Holmes and, perhaps most notable of all, Dan Aykroyd from Ghostbusters.

Even Hitler was autistic now too, his own personal obsessive interest presumably being the limitless perfidy of the Jews. If no less an all-time high achiever than Der Führer is now revealed as having been a high-functioning autistic, then autism today must enjoy a new status of profound social cachet, not social stigma, as in primitive, prejudiced days of old. Being neurodiverse can now help you conquer all of Western Europe, after all.

Therefore, doctors are increasingly being besieged by people desperate to have their own individual personality flaws and failings—being emotionally cold and distant, say, having an abrupt and rude manner with others, or developing a disturbingly detailed aspiration to commit genocide against all known inferior races—revalidated as enjoying some sort of pseudo-clinical basis. Then, they can be automatically absolved of their sins by the new white-coat-clad priests of Oprah’s Church of Wellness™.

According to David and Deeley, patients are yelling at their doctors, “But it’s my lived experience!” putting the quacks under irresistible social pressure to conform to their own fake self-diagnoses. Thus, what we are now seeing is actually a fashionably driven boom merely in diagnoses of autism, rather than a genuine increase in the underlying genuine condition per se—an ideologically fueled social contagion, precisely like transgenderism. If autism really is now a “spectrum,” then where’s the cut-off point? Conceivably, everyone could be on it, could they not?

Head toward the comically self-validating website reframingautism.org, and learn that “there’s no right or wrong way to come to the conclusion that you’re autistic.” What, not even just flipping a coin, consulting the I Ching, haruspicating entrails, or asking a Ouija board? No, because “Any route to your self-discovery is completely valid…. However you arrive at the conclusion, you are valid, and you get to identify however you choose.” That’s the precise kind of defective logic, taken to its extreme, that sees tall kids being groomed to become giraffes.

Positively Retarded
A fascinating 2023 study of an unnamed U.K. Sixth Form college whose staff and management enjoyed a distinctly left-liberal, diversity-worshipping outlook on life demonstrates perfectly how this kind of scam works. No long-necked teens turned up there dressed as Geoffrey, but, indoctrinated day in, day out in emetic mental well-being nonsense, an exceedingly disproportionate number of students began to self-ID as being “neurodiverse”—over a quarter of adolescents on the school’s books, more than double the national average. No wonder, when the coddled kids were given immediate access to a sacred safe-space-room-cum-padded-cell named “The Sanctuary,” filled with specialist staff members “dedicated to peace” whenever they felt the need to run out of lessons if distressed by hard sums or long words in books.

Predictably, the (mental) institution in question held regular whole-school cult-indoctrination assemblies devoted to focusing upon “mental hygiene.” When I was a Sixth Former, we just used to have whole-school assemblies devoted to the Good Word of Our Lord Jesus. Jesus was better.

According to the study’s authors, the children “having” [sic] self-diagnosed conditions like autism lent them automatic social cachet as walking embodiments of “Social Justice” [also sic] in action. Therefore, “Many of the students expressed a strong desire to seek out an official label for the disability they felt they might have, which had either been self-identified through looking on the Internet…or had been ‘picked up’ by teaching staff.” They furthermore sought out ostentatiously visible neurodiverse fashion accessories like earplugs to block out allegedly distressing noise from their oh-so-oversensitive pseudo-autistic earholes—which could actually have been genuinely beneficial to their mental well-being, because then they wouldn’t have been able to hear their ridiculous teachers grooming them into a state of fake public spasticity.

When I was a schoolboy, the only time I can recall anyone wanted to pretend to be disabled was when one perfectly healthy classmate boasted of planning to “borrow” a disabled relative’s wheelchair and then use it to jump the queue for rides next time he visited Alton Towers theme park whilst sitting in it, limp-wristed and drooling. If he was lucky, he said, he might even “get a sympathy wank” from one of the more bleeding-heart park attendants in their little hut afterward. When the rest of us expressed our profound disgust at this sicko scheme, he quickly dropped it. For today’s woke-washed youth, however, pretending to be mentally and physically handicapped is now a very public expression of their purported existence upon a far higher plane of left-wing morality.

Spastic Fantastic
Revealingly, students in the college—which was rather selective in its upper-middle-class intake—also chose to self-ID not simply as Auties, but as being abnormally “clever,” at least compared to the defective untermenschen proles who attended most normal local schools. Being of such superior intellect, these child geniuses consequently also felt they “were more likely to be enlightened and tolerant of difference than other young people,” like junior NYT readers, to the extent they actually sought to be “different” (re: psychologically unwell) themselves.

The whole autism epidemic in the place sounded more like one grand, gigantic opportunity to virtue-signal more than anything else. Here is the testimony of one cretinously woke student:

“I am chairing the prom committee at the moment…and we are going to do it as a silent disco because we’re very much aware that we’ve got a high percentage of people with autism or ADHD or people who…like myself, have some sort of sensory overload, just some anxiety from too much going on.”

I didn’t like discos as a teenager either. I didn’t begin spuriously self-identifying as autistic, though, and then turning up at them anyway before self-righteously demanding everyone turn the music off, or I’d publicly shit myself in the middle of the dance floor. Perhaps there is something profoundly wrong with kids like these today, after all—the Maoist, #BeKind society around them has deliberately programmed them all to be so.

As the report’s authors put it, the college’s students “appeared able to re-make disability as a liberal intellectual identity-marker and use it as a form of [social] capital” by choosing “to position themselves in empowering ways in relation to divergence from health ‘norms.’” Do note those inverted commas there.

The skeptical parents of one self-ID-ing girl put the real truth of the matter more bluntly: “They just think it’s trendy to have a disability or be mentally ill.” At last—a voice of sanity! Those parents want to be careful. With attitudes like that, they’ll soon end up locked away in a straitjacket.

The Week’s Clingiest, Stringiest, and Springiest Headlines

SXSS
The South by Southwest (SXSW) film and music festival in Austin is no stranger to disruption. In 2014, a man named Rashad Charjuan Owens plowed through the crowd in his SUV, killing four. Why’d he do it? It was springtime; there were no Christmas parades.

The motive? Considering that he’s a black man with “char” in his name, it certainly had something to do with cold food.

This year, the SXSW controversy involves Jews. One of the festival’s sponsors is the U.S. Army, and over a hundred bands have pulled out to protest Israel’s Gaza war, the argument being that the Army’s too chummy with the IDF. Funny enough, not a single band ever canceled back when Obama was drone-bombing thousands of “brown people.” Indeed, it was standing-room-only when Obama premiered his award-winning film, Drone of Interest.

The U.S. Army bombs thousands of browns? “Where’s the stage, dude, I gotta do sound-check.”

Israel’s in a war? “Boycott the U.S. Army, man. Teach them Jews a lesson.”

Remember, most musicians are morons, and even the ones who weren’t born that way fried their brains on drugs in their teens.

According to The Hill, the bands that canceled include “Squirrel Flower, Mamalarky, and Kneecap,” which sounds like Joe Biden when he gets away from the Secret Service and goes wandering on the White House lawn.

Squirrel! Flower!

“Mr. President, please come back inside; you might hurt yourself.”

Mamalarky!

(Biden trips and falls to the ground.)

Owwwwww…kneecap!”

Sadly, the best anti-Israel concert has already come and gone. Very Burning Man, organized by Aaron Bushnell.

THE WINDED CITY
It’s the annual springtime thaw in Chicago. That’s when the ice melts and residents see the corpses of the murder victims that’ve been buried under snow the past four months.

“American history’s been harsh for girls who want to simultaneously wink, stick out their tongue, and give the middle finger while lip-synching to music.”

This year, though, something’s in the air, and it ain’t just the odor of DaShawn’s thawed corpse.

The day before the primary for Cook County State’s Attorney (DA) was probably the wrong day for an Illinois District Judge to rule that illegal immigrants have a right to own firearms. Obama appointee Sharon Coleman declared that illegal bean Heriberto Carbajal-Flores should be allowed to own guns restriction-free, after the “newcomer” wowed her with the argument that he only had the guns to “shoot theee leaves” because leaf blowers cause climate change.

However, last Tuesday was the primary election to replace outgoing DA Kim Foxx, the frog-mouthed Soros-backed ghetto girl who declined to run for another term because “if I don’t open dat weave shop now, I ain’t never gon’ do it.”

Running to replace Foxx: a somewhat tough-on-crime white female judge, and a “free every inmate of color” extremist black guy with the Dem Party endorsement. And thanks to Coleman’s ruling, Chicago’s blacks—the city’s most formidable bloc—have visions of armed illegal Venezuelans and Hondurans rampaging through their neighborhoods and robbing the goooood stores before the blacks get the chance.

Black Americans don’t fear much, but they fear armed beans, the only demographic that doesn’t fear them.

So, as of this moment, the “somewhat tough-on-crime” white woman is leading the “give all murderers a hug and a gift basket” black guy. The DA’s race got so hot following Coleman’s ruling, more Chicagoans voted in the DA primary than the presidential one.

The race has yet to be decided because the Democrats are busy collecting votes from the thawed corpses.

KABLAMNESTY
Sticking with Chicago, a city so enriched by diversity foreign and domestic that the locals are practically dying of happiness (correction: That’s literally dying of nappiness), more enrichment took place last week at a popular Little Village gay nightclub (ironically, the same neighborhood where the gun-toting bean from the previous story lives).

A proud Venezuelan tranny emerged from the club, looking forward to spending the rest of the night patronizing businesses and yelling at the clerks “¡llámame señora!”

However, “her” plans were ruined when a car pulled up and a Hispanic man shouted “bad gay” and shot the tranny in the groin, blowing “her” penis to kingdom cum.

Free sex changes! Is there nothing illegals can’t do?

Turns out the shooter’s a 29-year-old cartel-linked Venezuelan. And Kim Foxx refused to prosecute.

It’s a good thing she’s not running again, because she’d have trannies and Jews against her, the latter because that Venezuelan did with one cheap bullet what Doctors Sheinbloom and Lipzenschitz at Northwestern Memorial charge $100,000 to do.

Oddly, Governor DeSantis doesn’t want any of this enrichment in Florida. DeSantis “is deploying 250 law enforcement officers and an air-and-sea fleet to curb a potential wave of Haitian immigrants.”

Last week in Florida’s primary the GOP flipped a bunch of seats.

Wonder if there’s any connection?

To be fair to Haitians, when they shoot the penises off trannies, they don’t leave ’em littering the sidewalk like that thoughtless Venezuelan. They eat ’em.

As DeSantis patrolled the sea to block Haitians, the Dominican Republic constructed a 100-mile border wall, literally overnight (because Steve Bannon wasn’t there to steal the pesos), to keep Haitians out.

Poor Haitians…they must feel so unwanted. Unwanted by their fellow man, and—with thousands of them dying each month via cyclones, hurricanes, floods, famine, disease, and earthquakes—apparently unwanted by the earth itself.

SHIVERY SCOTUS SHINDIGS
A Jewish man, fed up with his frigid female co-religionists, decides to frequent a black bar, as he’d heard that black women are wild in bed. He meets a lady, and after a few drinks they get a room, where the man has the greatest sex of his life.

The next day he notices that his “member” looks browner. By day 2 it’s brown as a football. By day 3, black as a bowling ball. After a battery of tests, his doctor tells him that amputation is the only solution. Unwilling to face that possibility, the man visits a black doctor for a second opinion.

The black doctor immediately says to the man, “Lemme guess—you had sex with a black girl, and now your penis is black.”

“Yes,” the man answers.

“And the white doctors wanna cut it off.”

“Yes,” he says mournfully.

“Listen,” the doc reassuringly states, “I’ve seen this before. No need to amputate. No need at all.”

“Oh thank God,” the man cries.

“Yeah,” says the doctor, “one or two more days it’ll fall off on its own.”

Sometimes the coupling of a Jewish man and a black woman produces a risqué joke. Sometimes it produces Adam Serwer, a human joke and the craziest muthafinkel on the left. Last week, Mr. “Glatt Meets Gat” claimed in The Atlantic that the three liberal SCOTUS justices only sided with the majority in restoring Trump to the Colorado ballot because they felt threatened by “violent backlash from Trump supporters.”

And this is why Americans hate the media. The Atlantic editors know that isn’t true. If they genuinely believed that three female SCOTUS justices were being threatened by MAGAs, it’d be a page-one news story, not an op-ed. It’s the dishonesty that turns people off, misinformation by editors who know better.

Not that SCOTUS justices don’t harbor legitimate fears. Sotomayor is scared of global warming, because a world in which dying trees produce no leaves would render 90 percent of her family unemployed. And Jackson? Three feet of water. She’s the only justice on the bench who could be kept from court by a kiddie pool.

YASS, A MASSA
American history’s been harsh for girls who want to simultaneously wink, stick out their tongue, and give the middle finger while lip-synching to music. In Puritan times, such women were burned as witches. During the Revolutionary War, they were shunned by Ben Franklin as the only type of skank he wouldn’t date (and he’d been known to screw lifeforms that had yet to be identified by science).

During Prohibition, a generation of young men sobered up and discovered that “this crap isn’t attractive at all.” And during the Red Scare, uglyface/finger/synching was seen as communist subversion.

Joe McCarthy: “I put it to the witness that she’s a tool of the Politburo.”

Brittany: “ERR-MAH-GERD, have you no DERCENCY?”

McCarthy: “No what?”

Brittany: “DERCENCY! DERCENCY!”

McCarthy: “I don’t understand you!”

Roy Cohn (shaking his head): “And they wonder why I never got married.”

McCarthy: “No they don’t.”

And then TikTok arrived, and uglyface/finger/synch girls became superstars. See, that’s how TikTok established dominance. As Facebook and Twitter were stifling growth with shadowbans, to the extent that users would be grateful for just one new follower, TikTok was like, “Do bimbo uglyface and you’ll get 100,000 followers immediately!”

It was a good business model; too bad it was employed by the Chinese for espionage.

And now Congress wants to take it all away. And that doesn’t sit well with Rand Paul, a huge fan of uglyface (as are all Ayn Rand acolytes). Also, Paul happens to be the recipient of big money from Jeff Yass, a mogul who could lose up to $30 bil if TikTok is banned. Another Yass teat-suckler is Trump, who suddenly decided last week, “For some reason I don’t wanna ban TikTok after all!”

When called out on Yass’ influence, Trump “truthed” that it has nothing to do with money. TikTok’s demise would give Mark Zuckerberg new users, and Trump hates Zuckerberg.

And behold the lowered expectations of today’s political reality: Trump’s accused of flipping because of influence peddling, and when he replies, “No, I did it because of a petty personal grudge,” everyone’s like “Oh, well that’s better.”

ERR-MAH-GERD

Nashville, TN, along with many other urban areas that have suffered for years, even decades, under Democrat-Leftist control, was not immune from the “mostly peaceful” Burning, Looting, and Murdering that took place during that long hot summer of 2020. In fact, Nashville was rocked by violence to such an extent that the mayor was forced to declare a state of emergency and called out the national guard as arsonists ran wild, even managing to set fire to the city’s courthouse.

The aforementioned long hot summer of 2020 came about by the death of career criminal George Floyd while resisting arrest in Minneapolis that Memorial Day weekend. Of course, the way it was depicted in the media was that an innocent-as-the-day-is-long black man was randomly stopped by white police officers and intentionally murdered for no reason other than he was black and they were white. And cops. Besides the rioting that turned scores of inner cities into Dresden redux, a political movement came from seemingly out of nowhere to defund the police, empty the prisons, and essentially decriminalize crime. The blood libel of America as irredeemably white supremacist also drove blacks to the polls to help get rid of Donald Trump, who has been continually slimed as “literally Hitler” before, during, and well after he was deposed in the wake of the 2020 election.

“Democrat Leftists are allowed to say whatever the hell they want, regardless of consequences real or imagined, because they get to control the language.”

Having wrested control of the government on the myth of black genocide at the hands of white police and a structurally racist criminal justice system, the resulting national crime wave, compounded by orders of magnitude by thousands of dangerous violent criminals amongst the millions of illegal migrants flooding in due to a nonexistent border and immigration control, has blown up in the collective face of Democrat politicians. That’s because, despite being the butt of a sarcastic joke, “minorities and women are hardest hit.” Quite literally. To stave off electoral disaster this November as they lose constituents en masse as a result of the aforementioned, some Democrat politicians are joining Republicans in trying to reverse the disaster of the Defund the Police movement.

But still, Leftist racialist brainwashing is a hell of a drug.

State Sen. Charlane Oliver, who represents Nashville, said the Republicans’ pro-police legislation is “rooted in racism,” and will force those in her district to “fight like hell.” The bill was sponsored by Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor after Memphis passed an ordinance that banned traffic stops for issues such as expired registrations, a single inoperable headlight or brake light, and loose bumpers, News Channel 3 reported.

The Memphis city council passed the ordinance following the death of Tyre Nichols, a black man, who was fatally injured during a confrontation with five black Memphis police officers on January 7, 2023, after he was pulled over….

“So yeah, we gonna fight,” Oliver added. “Dr. King said that riots are the language of the unheard. You ain’t seen nothing yet. If you keep silencing us like this, what do you think our district is going to do? We have had it up here. Gloves are off. Like, we gonna fight like hell. You don’t expect us to respond when you gaslight us every single day with these bills?”

So, a vote doesn’t go her way and this Charlane Oliver threatens that there will be riots in Nashville if a law she disapproves of is passed. Considering what happened during the summer of 2020 in Nashville and elsewhere, any reasonable, rational human being would say that Ms. Oliver was threatening to unleash a (wait for it)…BLOODBATH?!

Multiple media outlets, liberal pundits, and pretty much everyone who can’t stand former President Donald Trump engaged in a virtual feeding frenzy over the weekend, frothing at the mouth over his campaign rally comment promising a “bloodbath” if his 2024 presidential bid is unsuccessful.

Anyone reading the headlines published by a number of mainstream outlets might believe that Trump was not just predicting, but calling for, political violence if he were to lose another election….

But while those outlets and others were only too happy to share that one cherry-picked line—Trump predicts ‘bloodbath’ if he loses in November—they were equally happy to leave out the fact that at the time, he was specifically talking about the automobile industry and the economic impact of a company owned by Communist China building cars in Mexico to avoid U.S. tariffs.

As we know all too well by now, to even attempt to point out the chutzpocrisy of the Democrat-Left is like micturating into the 600 mph eye of Jupiter. That is, of course, their standard operating procedure in terms of how they function socially and politically and, via one of Saul Alinsky’s infamous “Rules,” what they will beat us over the head with every single chance they get, the accuracy of the charge be damned.

It’s why I get so exercised about language insofar as what is and is not appropriate and more crucially who gets to be the arbiter of it. Of course, that has been the sole purview of the left since they went full tilt boogie in undermining our society since the sexual revolution, the women’s movement, and the complete undermining of the legitimate civil rights movement, going on 60 years. All of it aimed at seizing absolute power. And the control of language is a, if not the, prime super weapon in the Democrat-Left’s drive to dominate us. There are quite a few people who get irked at Trump for “shooting his mouth off.”

I get irked at him for other reasons, mostly in terms of staff and past policy. But if, because of this, we’re going to suddenly demand that he somehow forces himself to literally think before uttering every word at every single rally and interview going forward, then it’s over. Love him or hate him, Trump’s greatest asset is what some perceive as his Achilles’ heel: his mouth. And it’s only an Achilles’ heel insofar as we allow the Democrat-Left to make it so. His ability to connect with an audience speaking off the cuff is something the other side cannot do. Especially the demented vegetable presidential poseur whose brain is melting by the hour and can’t put two coherent sentences together even with a teleprompter, idiot cards, and a media that is covering for him and covering it all up, with lesser and lesser effectiveness the closer we get to November.

So, rabid racialist Charlane Oliver, because of her pigmentation, gender, and most crucially because she has the magical “D” after her name, gets to threaten actual, real violence in the form of “riots.” If this story even gets covered in the regime’s usual house organs, you can bet your bottom dollar the propagandists are going to invoke the word “context” out the wazoo, which is funny since the actual context is a direct threat to foment civil unrest.

But of course, you must always remember this axiom that my buddy Ace at AOSHQ coined: “Our speech is violence, but their violence is speech.” More than that, Democrat Leftists are allowed to say whatever the hell they want, regardless of consequences real or imagined, because they get to control the language. Unless and until we no longer accept that situation, we’ll always be under the gun.

And please don’t take “under the gun” out of context, or else my head will explode. Literally. Or not.

UPDATE: On the heels of declaring it would be the Jews’ fault if Biden loses the election because they refuse to back the calls for a cease-fire that would allow Hamas to finish Israel off for good, James “Skeletor” Carville let this slip while talking with Anderson Cooper:

Using the euphemism for spilling blood during murder, Carville said, “Not so much him I mean to be candid Anderson, President Biden is not the best attack politician. I’ve ever seen in my life and hopefully leave it at that. But they are a lot of people to do what I call a quote, the wetwork, unquote.

Cooper said, “It sounds like a mob hit.”

Carville said, “Kind of, but it’s a paid TV and stuff like that. But yes it’s CIA term to take a guy out. But he doesn’t need to do to what work people like me and other groups in the party need to do that he he’s not very good at it. I don’t think people want to hear from that. And then he can he can cruise along at a better altitude, but this has got to be done and they’ve got a precious advantage right now and they have it.”

Despite Skeletor starting to babble like Joey Sponge-Brain Sh*ts-Pants when his dementia meds wear off, remember, he’s talking to Anderson Cooper, an ally on a house organ of the junta. And he’s using actual terminology that the intel community uses to mean assassination and caps it off with “this has got to be done and they’ve got a precious advantage right now and they have it.”

Meaning Trump has to be assassinated and the CIA has the opportunity right now to do it. One of two things is going on here. Either this is illustrative of the fact that the Dems are out of their minds that Trump is going to actually win in November or they are so cocky and loose-lipped in front of their friends that they can openly boast and/or suggest what will be or should be done.

But Trump said “BLOODBATH”! Sheesh.

A correspondent who knows precisely the type of things that I habitually complain about (and without such complaint I would have nothing to say) kindly drew my attention to the proposed Obama Center in Chicago. The Center is completely mad, the madness in question being an attack of megalomania that makes the Pyramid of Cheops seem like a statement of modesty by the pharaoh.

The vast proposed building is in Jackson Park, and it was the subject of legal actions because a group called Protect Our Parks believed that it was contrary to the covenant governing the park’s usage: but, perhaps not surprisingly, the friends of Obama won the actions.

The Obama Presidential Center says of itself that “it will be a welcoming, vibrant, campus where people from across the street or from around the globe can come and get inspired, find common ground, and take action.” The Obama Presidential Center “will feature a world-class museum, public library, and gathering spaces.”

“It will contain Obama memorabilia and perhaps his toenail clippings and other holy relics—hence the inspired crowds from around the globe.”

Note that an institution that does not yet exist declares not what it intends or aspires to be, but what it “will be,” as if vibrancy and inspiration could be decreed by executive mandate. As to what the people from around the globe will be inspired and find common ground about, the Center does not inform us, but we could have a pretty good guess.

The word “world-class” gives the total mediocrity of the whole scheme away: It is mediocre except for its megalomania, which is exceptional.

No one would say of the Louvre that it was a world-class museum, that Velasquez was a world-class painter, or that Bach was a world-class composer. Whenever any scheme aims or claims to be “world-class,” you may be sure that it is the brainchild of megalomaniac mediocrities. Alas, our world is full of them, they dominate public affairs. There is nothing wrong with mediocrity in itself, of course, because by definition there must be a lot of it, and we are most of us mediocre (at best) at most things. It is when mediocrity is combined with overweening ambition, as it increasingly is, that it becomes dangerous.

What will the supposedly world-class museum at the Obama Center contain? Again, I quote:

The Obama Foundation is looking to hear from members of the broader Obama family—including longtime volunteers, friends, and staffers—who would like to offer artifacts for possible acquisition or loan consideration for the Obama Presidential Center Museum.

These range from artifacts from the Obamas’ early lives and careers, to materials from the Presidential campaigns, administration, and beyond.

It will contain Obama memorabilia and perhaps his toenail clippings and other holy relics—hence the inspired crowds from around the globe. Chicago will become the Lourdes of Illinois, where people in wheelchairs and various forms of paralysis will come to be cured. Candles will be lit to the Virgin Michelle, and there will be a room where the crutches no longer necessary will be hung, with little messages of thanks. There will be a committee formed of members of the broader Obama family, which includes the whole of humanity apart from the renegade skeptics who doubt Obama’s sanctity, to decide which miraculous cures wrought by prayers asking for the intercession of Michelle are genuine and which are doubtful.

The proposed building looks like an Egyptian pyramid designed by someone with visuospatial agnosia. It “echoes movement upward from the grassroots. Its form is inspired by the idea of four hands coming together, a recognition that many hands shape a place.” This is a tribute to Obama’s deep-felt egalitarianism: Everyone should have several mansions costing tens of millions.

We learn that “The exterior of the Museum building will feature words taken from President Obama’s speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches, and will be cast into the structure in such a way that visitors will be able to look out through the words onto the South and West sides of Chicago.” Kim Il-Sung would be envious. He has only Pyongyang to indoctrinate.

There will be “Dynamic Museum exhibits across four floors [that] will highlight the events, policies, challenges, and accomplishments of the Obama Presidency.”

Certainly, the museum will be world-class when it comes to Obama relics. There will be nothing, one hopes, to touch it. But I suspect that even the most ardent devotees might, by the end of it, feel they have had something of a surfeit. As I read, I couldn’t help thinking of a poem by Ernesto Cardenal, “Somoza desveliza la estatua de Somoza enel estadio Somoza” (“Somoza Unveils a Statue of Somoza in the Somoza Stadium”).

Cardenal was a Nicaraguan Catholic-cum-Marxist priest who became a revolutionary and was then disillusioned by the Sandinistas. He was his country’s foremost poet. His poem, “Somoza desveliza” etc., is a satire on the dictator, Anasasio Somoza, whom the Sandinistas overthrew:

It is not that I believe that the people erected this statue to me,
because I know better than you that I ordered it myself.
Nor that I can claim with it to pass into immortality
Because I know that the people will one day pull it down.

Once, in Paraguay, during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, I arrived at Puerto Stroessner on the M.V. Alfredo Stroessner to the sound of the Alfredo Stroessner polka playing over the public address system.

I have been to quite a number of countries with museums glorifying politicians. For example, there was a pyramid in Tirana, capital of Albania, glorifying the life and work of the vile Enver Hoxha. In it was a film of Enver Hoxha in his library, selecting a book to read in his armchair. He selected one and settled happily to read it. It was a volume of his collected works.

Of course, Obama is not in the same league of evil as Hoxha. But Hoxha’s pyramid was better than his, and at least Hoxha was dead when it opened as a museum. The best that one can say of the Obama Museum is that it is better than the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington: At least it wasn’t designed by Frank Gehry.

Theodore Dalrymple’s latest book is Ramses: A Memoir, published by New English Review.

Interviewing Elon Musk this week, former CNN host Don Lemon demonstrated the real-life consequences of affirmative action.

Interestingly enough, Lemon himself is an affirmative action beneficiary who miraculously hung on at CNN despite committing one moronic gaffe after another (maybe he’s just got television magic!). The only CNN on-air personality to handle himself worse was Jeffrey Toobin.

Lemon was baffled by Musk’s claim that “if we lower standards for what it takes to become a board-certified surgeon … then more people will die than if we don’t lower the standards, therefore we should not lower the standards.”

This was apparently Lemon’s first encounter with the logical sequence known as a “syllogism.”

Lemon’s response: “Do you understand how by saying just that standards are being lowered that you’re implying that they’re being lowered because people are less skilled and less intelligent, and you’re talking about people of color?”

“Yes, he was making a difference in his patients’ lives, mostly by shortening them.”

What on Earth do liberals think “affirmative action” is? (And when I say “liberals think,” of course, I’m speaking figuratively.)

Does Lemon understand that when universities fight like wildcats to hide their black students’ SAT scores, they are also kind of implying blacks are less skilled and less intelligent?

Last year, during the part of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit known as “discovery,” Harvard University finally coughed up the data. If — you’ll pardon the expression — “newsman” Lemon had followed the news, he would know precisely how much standards had been lowered for black students.

Applicants in the top “academic decile” (GPA plus standardized test scores) were accepted in the following percentages: Asians: 13%; Whites: 15%; Blacks: 56%. Perhaps more jaw-dropping, in the fifth academic decile — not quite Harvard material — the percentages were: Asians: 2% (musicians); Whites: 3% (football players and Jared Kushner); Blacks: 22%.

People who’ve been paying attention were shocked. Good lord, who are the 44% of blacks in the top academic decile who DON’T get into Harvard? What kind of horrendous character defect do they have? Do they all submit “Cill My Landlord” as their personal essay? How can it not be 100%?

Nonetheless, Lemon asked Musk, “Why do you think they’re lowering the standards for minority doctors?” To his credit, at no point did Lemon cry out, “I thought we agreed there’d be no math during this interview!”

The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald has been documenting the total abandonment of standards at medical schools for years. Before choosing your heart surgeon, you might want to review the statistics she’s laid out most recently in her book, When Race Trumps Merit.

In 2021, the average white score on the MCAT was at the 71st percentile. The average black score was at the 31st percentile.

Whereupon medical schools began dropping the MCAT altogether. Henceforth, some students (guess who?) would be offered admission on the basis of their “strong appreciation of human rights and social justice,” as The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai puts it. In other words, would-be physicians can now skip those chapters on chemistry and physiology as long as they watch the Source Awards.

The lowered standards persist throughout medical training. Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE), given after the second year of medical school, allows students to begin practicing medicine and “matches” them to a residency. But it seems that the average score for black students is a full standard deviation below the score for whites and Asians.

Although the test is multiple-choice and graded by computer, in January 2022, the USMLE dropped grades for Step 1 and converted it to “pass/fail.”

So now, instead of medical students being matched to specialties that play to their strengths, they are randomly assigned to residencies for which they may have little aptitude or interest. You know, the same way they assign on-air talent at CNN. It’s a brilliant way for training the next generation of doctors.

Also, starting next year, open-heart surgery will be graded “pass/fail.”

Responding to Musk’s claim that the “probability that someone will die I think at some point is high,” Lemon said, “but that’s a hypothetical that doesn’t mean it’s happening.”

In fact, it already has happened, countless times, all over the country — but notoriously, to the most famous affirmative action doctor of all: the black applicant who took Allan Bakke’s place at the medical school of the University of California at Davis. Here was an incompetent black doctor whose medical errors couldn’t be brushed under the rug, though affirmative action proponents did their best.

Dr. Patrick Chavis openly admitted that he never would have gotten into medical school without UC Davis’ affirmative action program. Sen. Teddy Kennedy, The New York Times and the Nation magazine all touted Chavis as an affirmative action success story! Unlike Bakke, who went to work at the Mayo Clinic, Chavis was serving a disadvantaged community and “making a difference in the lives of scores of poor families,” as Sen. Kennedy said.

Yes, he was making a difference in his patients’ lives, mostly by shortening them. Dr. Chavis’ liposuction surgery left one patient bleeding, vomiting and urinating uncontrollably. But instead of taking her to a hospital, he let her bleed in his home for another 40 hours. By the time she managed to escape and check herself into a hospital, she’d lost 70% of her blood. (To be fair, she looked amazing when bikini season rolled around!)

Miraculously, she lived, as did most of his other liposuction patients who ended up in the emergency room. One, Tammaria Cotton, did not.

But the affirmative action cover-up can never end: It took the California medical board a year to suspend Dr. Chavis’ license, with patient advocates screaming bloody murder at such a pathetically slow response.

You think Bakke could have killed a patient to so little fanfare?

The New York Times took no notice of the affirmative action doctor’s grisly liposuctions, except a brief notation in his obituary years later, after he was gunned down in an attempted carjacking. In paragraph 7, the Times extravagantly described Chavis’ medical malpractice thus: “He was accused of mistreating eight liposuction patients, one of whom died.”

Or, as Lemon repeated on autoplay: “There’s no actual evidence of what you’re saying.”

Then there was Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital in South Central Los Angeles — or “Killer King,” as the locals dubbed it. A “symbol of justice and political power to many black people,” as the Los Angeles Times put it in a Pulitzer Prize-winning story, “the majority of its staff has always been black.”

“Entire departments,” the Times investigation found, “are riddled with incompetence, internal strife and, in some cases, criminality. Employees have pilfered and sometimes sold the hospital’s drugs; chronic absenteeism is rampant; assaults between hospital workers are not uncommon.”

Despite having “abnormally high salaries for ranking doctors,” Killer King paid out “more per patient for medical malpractice” than any of the state’s 23 other public hospitals or medical centers.

So there’s loads of “evidence” that affirmative action kills, despite the best efforts of our universities, medical system and media to hide it. Of course, if you mention the evidence, you’ll be called a “white supremacist.”

See? No evidence.

Of all the lovely things and habits that Big Tech has deprived humans of by turning us into electronic robots, the one I miss the most is the love letter. Those sleepy types who go by the name of millennials have declared letter writing over, with the great majority of them ages 18 to 35 proudly admitting in a recent poll that they have never written an epistle, let alone a love letter.

So, what else is new? All one needs to do is look at these freaky types staring into their smartphones, their mouths half open and their eyes half shut, to know they will never sit down and write a love letter to someone of the opposite sex. In Britain, the leader of the opposition, Keith Starmer, and soon-to-be prime minister, could not even answer when asked in Parliament to define what is a woman. He was so scared of the trans lobby that he hemmed and hawed and never answered.

“Because of modern technology, the love letter has gone the way of good manners. And that is a great pity.”

Well, a woman is a person a man writes love letters to, and if this sounds very old-fashioned to emoji users, that’s just too bad. Defying modernity is the coolest of the cool, so if any of you young whippersnappers out there are having female problems, just sit right down and write her a love letter. The power of the love letter is incredible, and no member of the weaker sex has ever been able to resist it. And no member of the fairer sex has ever sold the love letter short. In fact, I shall go as far as to call the love letter the neutron bomb of heterosexual, romantic sex.

One lady of my acquaintance once wrote that in a case of fire she would first save her love letters and to hell with her jewelry. (You can always get new jewels.) She called love letters the campaign medals of youth, “infinitely varied in design and execution, one off, and made to measure.”

Personally, I have not received many love letters, but I have sure sent my share. All of them have been written at night, under the influence, and while exasperated with unrequited love.

In a real love letter, punctuation and grammar don’t matter all that much—the tone is all. In fact, if the besotted one wrote a perfectly constructed letter, he or she would not be as besotted as they think they are. The effort required to convey one’s feelings with precision is what makes the love letter difficult to write. The greatest and most tragic of poets, John Keats, may have died a virgin, but his letters to Fanny Browne were as good as his poems.

A love letter is a poem of sorts, like a fine madness compelling the writer to say things he or she would otherwise never say. Napoleon wrote nonstop love letters to Josephine, always complaining that she did not love him. The great Napoleon was right. Josephine was always cheating on him while he was away in Italy and Egypt fighting wars.

Because of modern technology, the love letter has gone the way of good manners. And that is a great pity. Love letters stay forever; telephone calls are gone with the dawn, even if they are recorded. I wrote my first love letter to a famous movie star and waited by the telephone for an answer. When she rang, the first question was how old I was. I added seven years to my 18. It worked. As in the famous movie, it was the start of a beautiful friendship.

Eventually, I patented one love letter and used it freely. It is called the R&J letter. It goes something like this: “Dear X. There’s a marvelous line in Romeo and Juliet when Romeo—having avenged Mercutio’s death—is advised to flee Verona. “But Heaven’s here, where Juliet lives,” he cries. However corny and sudden this may sound, this is how I’ve felt for you since the moment I met you. Love, T.”

Needless to say, one time two ladies who had received love letters from me decided to compare notes and realized that only the names were changed. I became a laughingstock. Never mind. You can’t win them all. After sixty years of writing love letters, I think I’m way up front. Hang up, sit down, write a good love letter, and give me some credit once they work. Just don’t type them or use the dreaded internet. Use pen and paper, no ballpoints, and no scent if you’re a man. Ladies are free to pour it in. Good luck.

Why do some buildings make us happier than other buildings?

Tom Wolfe offered an eye-opening explanation in his 2003 collegiate novel I Am Charlotte Simmons: “the existence of conspicuous consumption one has rightful access to—as a student had rightful access to the fabulous Dupont Memorial Library—creates a sense of well-being.”

But why did architects suddenly lose interest in their traditional task of providing the pleasures of conspicuous consumption eight decades ago?

One of my perennially popular Twitter threads is a long 2020 series of photos of city halls from before and after the Year Zero of American architecture, when pleasing the public suddenly vanished as a respectable goal for architects:

The dividing year in architecture is 1945. Before, Westerners tried, in many different styles, to make buildings look beautiful. After 1945, they felt like they didn’t deserve beautiful buildings.

My focusing on city halls lets you see apples-to-apples comparisons.

For example, here is San Diego’s first city hall, built in 1874 in what is now the popular Gaslamp Quarter nightlife district. Tourists now like to hang out in front of the old-timey architecture.

“Why did architects turn against appealing architecture in 1945?”

In the 1920s, planning began for a bigger city hall, which after the stock market crash of 1929 was eventually paid for by the Works Progress Administration in 1938. It’s less grandiloquent than some of the other spectacular California city halls of the interwar era, such as Pasadena (1927) and Beverly Hills (1932), thus reflecting the economically stressed 1930s’ trend toward streamlining ornamentation.

Still, most people today would be proud to have their city represented by a city hall that looks like this.

Up the coast, the 1939 Santa Monica city hall is another fine example of the New Deal’s tendency toward providing dignified detailing without wasting the taxpayers’ money on excessive ornaments:

But in 1964, the city government of San Diego gave up its Spanish revival/zigzag moderne “Jewel on the Bay” to move into a modern steel and glass skyscraper. (The county government of San Diego, no fools, has hung on to the 1938 building.) It’s difficult to find pictures online of the 1964 San Diego city hall, but this structure that resembles São Paulo worker housing appears to be it.

In this century, increasingly prosperous San Diego has frequently kicked around replacing its characterless International-style modernist city hall with something more worthy of this delightful city by the sea. One recent proposal combines a lot of Thom Mayne-style IBM punch-card random windows with some pointless Frank Gehry-style cheap-looking excrescences.

Yet, the basic conceit of shaping this port’s city hall like a sailboat’s sail is appealing. (It’s hard to go wrong with sailing aesthetics. Even Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles came out looking good because he used a sailboat CAD program to design it).

In recent decades, city hall design has moved away from the blank boredom of high modernism toward perverse detailing that reflects a hostility toward the employees and citizens. Starchitect Paul Rudolph’s 1963 Orange government building, an exercise in tentacle porn brutalism, and Boston’s 1968 concrete city hall, which looks like an upside-down Aztec human sacrifice platform, helped kick off this trend.

For example, Long Beach, California’s 1976 civic center put the city hall in Sauron’s tower (top center) and the public library in Hitler’s bunker (lower left). With all its tank traps, a company of Crips infantry could have fended off an entire armored battalion of Bloods.

21st-century tastes tend to be less brutalist, more fragile-looking. Long Beach’s World War Z city hall, for instance, was torn down and replaced in 2020 by what could be a couple of giant Apple stores.

For instance…here’s Richard Meier’s 2016 city hall for wealthy San Jose, with lots of what appears to be Gehry-esque chain-link fencing attached to the outside.

You might well say that there is no disputing taste. But I think I’ve come up with an objective measure of public sentiment regarding the beauty of public buildings: Simply measure how much demand there is from brides to be married there.

For example, I doubt if the San Jose city hall is booked up as long in advance for weddings as the stupendous 1915 beaux arts San Francisco city hall, where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were married. Tom Wolfe admiringly called it “this Golden Whore’s dream of paradise.”

Others have collected evidence of the 1945 problem. For instance, in 2007, the American Institute of Architects sponsored an elaborate survey of “America’s Favorite Architecture.” In the first round, 2,448 professional architects nominated 248 favorite buildings. In the second round, 2,214 members of the public looked at photos of the architects’ 248 choices and voted for their favorites.

The citizenry’s winner was the Empire State Building, the immensely famous 1931 art deco skyscraper. (I’d probably have voted for the ninth-place finisher, the Chrysler Building, the 1928 skyscraper with its supreme art deco crown.)

The public’s top 50 is rather lacking in post-1945 structures, with only seven. The top two from the past 79 years are monuments: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Then comes the World Trade Center of tragic memory, the new structural expressionist Hayden planetarium on the Upper West Side, and the colossal modernist Sears (now Willis) Tower in Chicago. Also, post-1945 are a couple of retro ringers: the 1947 art deco Delano Hotel in Miami Beach and Steve Wynn’s 1998 Italianate Bellagio casino in Las Vegas, the setting for the George Clooney Ocean’s Eleven.

So, only seven of America’s 50 favorite structures were built between 1945 and 2007. That’s not an impressive total considering our abundance of wealth and talent during that era.

In contrast, the 98 of the 248 buildings nominated by architects that were least liked by the public are laden with works by Bauhaus legends like Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Why did architects turn against appealing architecture in 1945?

The dirty secret of many of the world’s greatest buildings is that they are great because they are expensive (they please us because they indulge our desire for rightful access to conspicuous consumption), and you don’t want to inquire too deeply into how the funders came up with the money. It’s over the top to say that behind every great building there is a great crime, but there’s something to Balzac’s insight.

I got to thinking about that in regard to the question of why it’s so cheap to visit Bulgaria. I know somebody who took an all-expenses-paid (airfare, hotel, meals) one-week trip to Bulgaria in 2011 for $400.

Why is Bulgaria inexpensive? Well, it’s lacking in tourist attractions, such as magnificent buildings or giant ruins. And why is that? Because, down through history, the people of modern Bulgaria have much more often been ruled by their neighbors, such as the Byzantines and Ottomans, than they have had a chance to exploit others. Indeed, Bulgaria is rather pathetically named after the Bulgars, a Dark Ages tribe that briefly kicked the asses of its neighbors before the region subsided back to its usual role of getting pushed around by its rivals.

A lot of taxes and rent have been paid by Bulgarian peasants over the millennia to build cathedrals, mosques, and palaces in more strategically located places, most usually in Constantinople-Istanbul, which is definitely not lacking in tourist attractions.

Or consider the Parthenon of Athens, perhaps the most admired building in human history.

How did Pericles pay for it? In part by seizing the treasury of the Delian League, a NATO-like mutual defense organization of Greek city-states against another Persian invasion, which he slowly converted into an Athenian empire, which led to the disastrous Peloponnesian War.

Likewise, the Vatican selling indulgences to pay for St. Peter’s basilica aroused the ire of Martin Luther, which brought on the Protestant Reformation and, eventually, the Thirty Years War.

Not all great buildings are purely the product of exploitation. Gothic cathedrals seemed to have been fairly popular with the populace because the locals enjoyed some degree of rightful access to them. Also, the feudal system, for all its problems, tended to mean that wealth, while extremely unequal (having been won with the battle-ax), was localized and less likely to be siphoned off to a distant imperial capital that the peasants would never visit.

And the evolution of the capitalist system made it possible for an entrepreneur, such as Walter P. Chrysler, to acquire, without the battle-ax, vast enough wealth to pay for a great building.

But the stock market crash of 1929 temporarily embarrassed capitalist patrons like the Chryslers. So, many artists assumed that soon only leftist governments could commission their art works. And thus they resolved to make all their new designs reflect the highest architectural priority of Europe’s anti-bourgeois parties: public housing projects.

After World War II demolished much of Europe, it was necessary to throw up large, cheap buildings fast with no time to make them lovely enough so they would satisfyingly last for centuries.

In America, however, capitalism survived and even thrived after the War. Yet, as Wolfe wrote in his mordant 1981 book on architecture From Bauhaus to Our House, the patrons became the patronized:

But after 1945 our plutocrats, bureaucrats, board chairmen, CEO’s, commissioners, and college presidents undergo an inexplicable change. They become diffident and reticent. All at once they are willing to accept that glass of ice water in the face, that bracing slap across the mouth, that reprimand for the fat on one’s bourgeois soul, known as modern architecture.

In this century, however, there has been some evidence that the public is finally getting what it wants rather than what academic architects feel it deserves. For instance, college trustees appear to be demanding that their architects reproduce their campuses’ beloved 1920s buildings, only with bigger windows.

And here in Los Angeles, fire stations are being relocated from old lots that require returning fire trucks to block traffic by slowly backing in, to bigger lots with both entrances and exits. For instance, here’s the new firehouse near USC:

Surprisingly, the new firehouses being built on the bigger lots by an architectural firm in San Bernardino are constructed in styles that brawny men with mustaches appreciate. Firemen have a union and play a lot of politics, so apparently they are one set of conservatives who get buildings they enjoy and are proud to occupy.