My morning ritual involves drinking coffee from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mug (you may want to reconsider how much you take my analysis to heart, dear reader) and watching various podcasts/vlogs on YouTube, usually Ben Shapiro (or one of his colleagues), Steven Crowder, or Scott Adams.
So, one morning this week I saw an ad featuring the tantalizing E3 trailer for Fallout 76. For the uninitiated, the Fallout series of games posits an alternate future in which the United States and China slugged it out in a thermonuclear war during the mid-twentieth century, and decades (or centuries) later humanity emerges from various “vaults” (elaborate, underground bomb shelters) to reclaim the radioactive wastelands around them.
The E3 Trailer for Fallout 76. You should watch it at the very least for the great cover of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads“
Yes, it’s all quite nerdy, but when you’re a ten-year old boy trapped in a hairy man’s body—and have read a lot of Cold War history—it’s the kind of thing that gets you excited in the morning.
What really excited me about this announcement is that Fallout 76 takes place in Appalachia—specifically, a big ol’ chunk of West Virginia. Most Fallout games take place in the ash-strewn ruins of metropolitan areas, including Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, and Boston. Other than the rural deserts of Nevada, the game has not delved much into an almost-exclusively rural region (more die-hard fans will surely object; I’m not as familiar with the first two Fallout games and their settings, other than they seem to be focused on California; respectful corrections are welcome).
I’d always wondered what it would be like to experience a post-apocalyptic South Carolina (digitally, to be clear; fortunately, it looks like President Trump is ensuring we won’t have to do so for real), and have been hoping for a Fallout game set in the rural South. West Virginia isn’t really the South—I’m sure that will rile up further controversy—but it’s close enough. I assume that, if nuclear Armageddon were to occur, the best place to be would be somewhere rural enough the ChiComs wouldn’t try to blow it up.
So, what does this have to do with politics, the purported purpose of this portly page? Vanishingly little, other than it is cool to see a major video game set in the heart of Trump Country.
But the game’s setting has had an interesting economic impact. Apparently, online searches pertaining to tourism to West Virginia have shot up; the site West Virginia Explorer has seen fifteen times the traffic since the game was announced. The theme park Camden Park has seen an increase in calls for merchandise and inquiries about ticket sales.
West Virginia has struggled economically, especially during the Obama administration’s war on coal, and while it has enjoyed a mild comeback under President Trump, it’s still a very poor State.
Further, one usually one only sees video games in the news when some specious talking head claims they cause violence (they don’t), so it’s refreshing to see one having a positive effect on a beautiful State that could surely benefit from the tourism dollars.
My recommendation for the next Fallout game? Set that sucker in the ruins of Charleston, South Carolina… or maybe Cheraw.
President Trump was nominated by two members of Norway’s Progress Party, a conservative party that supports lower taxes and limited immigration, so it’s no surprise on that front, and it’s still a long way from winning the coveted Prize itself.
Yesterday, I wrote about the current child separation policy—and the issue of illegal immigration more broadly. I initially thought about approaching the topic with delicacy and tact, scaffolding my argument with ample disclaimers about sympathy for the situation of the children, etc. (and, in a flippant way, I did).
But the whole delicate, walking-on-eggshells, tightrope-walk performance of disclaimers is wearying, and I decided to go off half-Coultered instead. We live in an age in which voicing any controversial (usually conservative) opinion requires pages of tedious disclaimers along the lines of “while I agree that [controversial topic here] is bad, I would argue [very narrow, logically-consistent exception to the badness of the controversial topic].”
This practice gets old fast. To be an open conservative these days means enduring more litmus tests and grilling than a Supreme Court nominee—and that’s just to be able to function socially in mainstream society.
Robert Bork—one of my intellectual heroes
What does one get for one’s trouble? Only a very few people take the time to appreciate subtlety of argument. The Cultural Marxist, social justice warrior approach to any disagreement is to attack every position relentlessly on axiomatic grounds, rather than hearing out the opposing viewpoint in full and digesting it completely.
The effect is that to even make a controversial argument—no matter how balanced, well-researched, or logical—is to invite wholesale scorn and derision, up to and including expulsion from polite circles. The true goal of this monolithic dismissal of anything outside of the fashionable-for-the-moment social justice “mainstream” is to silence critics and opposing viewpoints, hoping that the tedium and weariness will simply shut up dissent.
Sometimes, it works, and it worked for a very long time (until Donald Trump hit the scene). Indeed, immediately after the 2016 presidential election, the tension of full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome made it impossible to even engage in good-natured ribbing with Clinton supporters. After eight years of spiking the football in cultural victory after cultural victory, the Left couldn’t take the shock of defeat in stride.
Post-Trump, however, some things have improved. As Charles Norman wrote in an essay at Taki’s Magazine (“Trapped in the Closet,” 15 June 2018), “Courage is contagious.” Once candidate Trump exposed the cracks in the Cult. Marx. framework, free speech began to get off life support.
In that essay, Norman quotes Paul Johnson; I’ll replicate that quotation here (emphasis Norman’s):
“…it’s good news that Donald Trump is doing so well in the American political primaries. He is vulgar, abusive, nasty, rude, boorish and outrageous. He is also saying what he thinks and, more important, teaching Americans how to think for themselves again.”
Trump was not the first to lead the way. Polemicist Ann Coulter, philosopher Richard Weaver, commentator Ben Shapiro, Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., President Ronald Reagan—the list goes on and on. Each laid a stone in the forgotten byway of liberty that brought us to where we are today. Our Founding Father’s cut the path, especially with the First Amendment and its free-speech safeguards, which are virtually unique in the world.
***
To close, I’ll share a brief personal anecdote: I remember being at some soiree not long ago, and was talking with a parent of some former students. Somehow, the discussion turned to politics. There’s always a brief moment in such situations that feels like you’re about to jump off a diving board, and you’re either going to land in water, or a lava-filled shark tank (don’t ask me how the sharks survive; that they do makes them all the more sinister).
I reluctantly-but-hopefully discussed the positive legacy of President Trump; I landed in a pool of soft marshmallow fluff. He, too, was quietly enthusiastic, and we spent the next half-hour relishing having found a fellow traveler. That’s what being a pro-Trump conservative—even in the rural South!—is like sometimes. When you meet another one, it’s like encountering another human being on what you thought was a deserted island.
So, enough disclaimers. Enough of this endless qualifying. Let’s have real, gutsy conversations again. Let’s say controversial things loudly, especially if they’re true.
I typically avoid wading into fashionable-for-the-moment moral crusades, but the hysteria over children being separated from their parents at the border is ludicrous, and demonstrates the typical “facts over feelings” emotionalism that mars our immigration debate. That feel-goodism is why we’re even in this mess—if it can be characterized as such—in the first place.
Because I’ll be deemed a monster—“Won’t somebody please think of the children!“—for not unequivocally denouncing this Clinton-era policy, I’ll issue the usual, tedious disclaimers: yes, it’s all very tragic; yes, it could be handled better; yes, I would have been terrified to be separated from my parents at such a young age; etc.
Now that the genuflecting to popular pieties is out of the way, let me get to my point: this entire situation would be a non-issue if we had simply enforced our immigration laws consistently for the past thirty years. President Trump isn’t the villain here (if anything, Congress is—they can take immediate action to change the policy or come up with some alternative—but I don’t even think they’re wrong this time); rather, the villains are all those who—in the vague name of “humanity” and “human rights”—ignored illegal immigration (or, worse, actively condoned it).
Sadly, it is an issue. But what else are we to do? Years of non-enforcement have sent the implicit but clear message to potential illegal immigrants that we don’t take our own borders (and, by extension, our national sovereignty and rule of law) seriously, and that if you’re sympathetic enough, you’ll get to skip the line. Folks come up from Mexico and Central America fully expecting that, after some brief official unpleasantness, they can dissolve into the vastness of the United States and begin sending remittances back to their relatives—who may then pull up stakes and come.
Further, sneaking into the country illegally is a crime, and the United States has every right to enforce its laws, including those pertaining to immigration. Mexico, similarly, has that right—and uses it unabashedly to police its own border (or to let Central American migrants waltz through on their way to the Estados Unidos). Naturally, the punishment for breaking laws is often detainment, and the kiddies don’t join dad in his cell.
To give a common example: what happens to the children of, say, an American heroin dealer when he’s arrested and sentenced to ten years in a drug bust? His children—if they have no relatives willing or able to take them in—go into the foster care system. It’s tragic, it’s terrible, but it’s part of the price of committing a felony. No one wants it to happen, but it’s a consequence of one’s actions. This reason is why crime is so detrimental to society at large, even beyond the immediate victims.
Unfortunately, a combination of winking at immigration enforcement (“eh, come on—you won’t get deported”), feel-good bullcrap (as my Mom would call it), and Emma Lazarus Syndrome (trademarked to The Portly Politico, 2018) have contributed to the current nightmare situation. Now that an administration is in office that actually enforces the duly legislated law of the land—and at a point at which the problem has ballooned to epic proportions due to past lax enforcement—the problem is far thornier and more consumed with emotional and moral peril.
As any self-governing, self-sufficient adult understands, sometimes doing what is necessary is hard. I do feel for these children who are stripped from their parents arms (although, it should be noted, usually for only a matter of hours), but who cares about my feelings? We can have compassion for those who try to arrive here illegally, as well as their children, without attempting to take on all of their problems, and without sacrificing our national sovereignty and our laws in the process.
The United States is the most generous nation in the world—and the most prosperous—but we cannot take everyone in; to do so would not make everyone else better off, but would rather destroy what makes America the land of compassion, liberty, prosperity, and charity that it is.
***
For further reference, I recommend the following videos, the first from the brilliant Ben Shapiro, the second from Dilbert creator Scott Adams:
Apparently, President Trump is one of my readers: this afternoon, the President issued an executive order charging the Department of Defense and the Pentagon with creating a separate “Space Force.” Trump said that “we must have American dominance in space” (emphasis added).
I wrote about this very topic one week ago today. Excellent move, President Trump. I’m going to push my nephew hard to join our X-Wing Division in 2035.
I was, initially, a Trump skeptic, and I voted for Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the South Carolina primaries the following February. When Trump first announced, I wrote him off—as so many others—as a joke. I appreciated his boldness on immigration, but I still thought the PC Police and the campus Social Justice Warriors were firmly in control of the culture, and that no one could speak hard truths.
I also remembered his brief flirtation with running in 2012, and thought this was just another episode in what I learned was a long history of Trump considering a presidential bid. At the South Carolina Republican Party’s state convention earlier in 2015, I asked two young men working on Trump’s pre-campaign (this was before The Announcement) if he was really serious this time. The two of them—they looked like the well-coifed dreamboat vampires from the Twilight franchise—both assured me that Trump was for real, and I left with some Trump stickers more skeptical than ever (note, too, that this was before the distinctive but simple red, white, and blue “Trump” lawn signs, and definitely before the ubiquitous “Make America Great Again” hats).
I even briefly—briefly!—considered not voting for Trump, thinking that he was not a “real” conservative. I still don’t think he’s a conservative in the way, say, that a National Review columnist is (although, the way they’ve gotten so noodle-wristed lately, that’s a good thing; I’ve just about lost all respect for David French’s hand-wringing, and Kevin Williamson went off the deep-end), but rather—as Newt Gingrich would put it—an “anti-Leftist.” That’s more than enough for me.
But my conversion to Trump came only belatedly. I can still find a notebook of notes from church sermons in which I wrote, “Ted Cruz won the Wyoming primary. Thank God!” in the margins.
Then something happened—something I predicted would happen on the old TPP site—and I couldn’t get enough of the guy. It wasn’t a “road to Damascus” epiphany. I started listening to his speeches. I read up on his brilliant immigration plan (why haven’t we taxed remittances yet?). I stopped taking him literally, and began taking him seriously.
And I noticed it happening in others all around me. Friends who had once disdained the Republican Party were coming around on Trump. Sure, it helped that Secretary Hillary Clinton was a sleazebag suffused with the filth of grasping careerism and political chicanery. But more than being a vote against Hillary, my vote—and the vote of millions of other Americans—became a vote for Trump—and for reform.
Trump made politics interesting again, too, not just because he said outrageous stuff on live television (I attended his rally in Florence, South Carolina before the SC primaries, and I could feel his charisma from 200 feet away; it was like attending a rock concert). Rather, Trump busted wide open the political orthodoxy that dominated both political parties at the expense of the American people.
Take trade, for example. Since World War II, both Democrats and Republicans have unquestioningly supported free trade. Along comes Trump, and suddenly we’re having serious debates again about whether or not some tariffs might be beneficial—that maybe it’s worth paying a little more for a stove or plastic knick-knacks if it means employing more Americans.
That’s not even to mention Trump’s legacy on immigration—probably the most pressing issue of our time, and one about which I will write at greater length another time.
Regardless, after over 500 days in office, the record speaks for itself: lower taxes, fewer regulations, greater economic growth, greater security abroad. At this point, the only reasons I can see why anyone would hate Trump are either a.) he’s disrupting their sweet government job and/or bennies; b.) they don’t like his rhetorical style, and can’t get past it (the Jonah Goldbergite “Never Trumpers”—a dying breed—fall into this group); or c.) they’re radical Cultural Marxists who recognize a natural foe. Folks in “Option B” are probably the most common, but they’re too focused on rhetoric and “decorum”—who cares if he’s mean to Justin Trudeau if he gets results? The folks in “Option C” are willfully ignorant, evil, or blinded by indoctrination.
As the IG report from last Thursday revealed—even if it wouldn’t come out and say it—the Deep State is very, very real. That there were elements within the FBI willing to use extralegal means to disrupt the Trump campaign—and, one has to believe, to destroy the Trump presidency—suggests that our delicate system of checks and balances has been undermined by an out-of-control, unelected federal bureaucracy. Such a dangerous threat to our republic is why we elected Trump.
President Trump, keep draining the swamp. We’re with you 100%.
Wow, what a week. President Trump met in Singapore with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, an historical meeting the effects of which we still don’t fully know or understand. Will Kim stick to his pledge to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula? Can we trust him? Is President Trump playing another masterful round of 4-D chess, or simply legitimizing a brutal regime and its evil leader?
Questions abound, as do interpretations. Ben Shapiro at The Daily Wire (video below) argues that conservatives are getting too excited, too soon, and purely on a partisan basis. While I do think we should proceed with caution—the Kim family has promised denuclearization eight times before—there is reason for optimism.
Historically, I would point to Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1988 visit to the United States, in which he fell in love with the country. The same criticisms abounded then—“human rights abuses!,” “gulags!,” etc.—and, while those criticisms were as true for the Soviet Union as they are—and even more so!—for the Kim regime, the door was opened for diplomacy, leading to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty. Ultimately, the Soviet Union collapsed, largely peacefully.
Kim seems to have some similarities to Gorbie, and some key differences from other authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the world today. For example, Kim seems genuinely to love Western culture—he hangs out with Dennis Rodman, he eats McDonald’s (clearly).
North Korea is certainly a terrible, totalitarian place, but the old ideology of Juche seems quaint. No one is going to blow themselves up to wear coveralls made from refined clay.
Cuba, too, is an old-school Cold War frontier, but the Obama administration got nothing from Cuba when it lifted the embargo—not even the release of political dissidents! The Cuba analogy fails, too, because we’ve already defanged Cuba, and have nothing to gain from opening up relations. Keep grinding out the sanctions there, for the sake of Cubans.
Consider, too, President Richard Nixon’s “opening” of China in the 1972. He met with the bloodiest dictator of the 20th century, Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong, which caught the ire of conservatives and anti-Communists in the West. While Mao’s atrocities and lethal policies were devastating to human life and contributed to the annals of misery Communism has inflicted upon humanity, Nixon and Henry Kissinger realized the diplomatic opportunity that presented itself, and took the plunge. China is still authoritarian and aggressive, but it’s beginning to fit in with the respectable, stable nations of the world.
Similarly, North Korea must be a liability to China, which is surely fed up with its tin-pottery. While China dreads seeing a unified Korean Peninsula, that might be better than dealing with a client-state that is becoming less of a strategic asset and more of a liability. Trump’s “war of words” last summer—including the hilarious “my button is bigger” tweet—played the game that Kim and the ChiComs understand. That’s why the President and Kim met, and why Kim will come to the United States.
That brings us back to Gorbie’s 1988 visit—just as he was enamored by the USA, I predict that Kim will be similarly blown away (and not via assassination, as Ben Shapiro mused about in one of his recent podcasts [Note: I watch Shapiro’s podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show, daily, and at the time of writing I could not find in which recent podcast he talked about assassinating foreign leaders, but he quipped that he disagreed with the Carter-era prohibition on taking out particularly wicked heads of state; I’m just not willing to go back through hours of video to find it]).
Have you ever seen recent immigrants from other countries that have this really one-dimensional idea of America? They think it’s all fast cars, hot babes, overweight cowboys, New York City, and rap music—and they eat it up, assimilating whole-hog in the most cartoonish way possible. I would not be surprised if Kim took the same route. He’s already chillin’ with Dennis Rodman. Homeboy’s going to be wearing a Chance the Rapper ballcap and eating French fries by the end of his first round of golf at Mar-a-Lago.
And what of Dennis Rodman? My earliest memory of D-Rod was a picture of him sporting bright green hair and a bunch of piercings—keep in mind, this was probably the 1990s, when the average person didn’t color his hair and get covered in tattoos (“this one represents my individuality”)—and I always assumed he was a crazy attention hog. When I heard he was hanging out with Kim Jong-un, I figured he’d gone full Jane Fonda.
But… maybe he really was trying to create understanding between the United States and North Korea. Maybe he was trying to bridge a gap across political systems and cultures. And—maybe it worked.
I’ve watched Rodman’s interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo (video below)—the one in which Rodman is sporting a “Make America Great Again” hat—and I don’t think his tears are fake. When I saw the clip originally on The Ben Shapiro Show, I was in awe. Here was a guy whose heart was open for all to see on national television. When he said (paraphrasing) “Even when no one would believe and no one would listen, I kept going, because I believed we could work out our differences,” my jaw dropped.
How many times, as a conservative in a progressive culture, have you felt alone, but you kept soldiering on, knowing that there was hope, that what you believed was right, even when you couldn’t articulate it in the face of overwhelming opposition? I doubt I’ll ever write this again, but in that moment, I identified with Dennis Rodman. I understood him.
Do not take anything I’ve written here as a trivialization of North Korea or the Kim family’s decades of atrocities. The people of North Korea are brainwashed and abused, put to death for exchanging James Bond DVDs, starving because their terrible government doesn’t function properly, and their leaders have purposefully isolated them from the world. It’s an hellacious place, and we shouldn’t legitimize an evil, totalitarian despot.
BUT—if President Trump can sway Kim Jong-un, and begin the liberalization of North Korea—if not the reunification of the Korean Peninsula—it will do the most since the opening of China in 1972 to improve the lives of millions of people. The North Korean people will be brought out of the darkness and into the community of nations.
Yes, China is still authoritarian, and denies its people their basic political and civil rights, but North Korea can have the chance to forge its own path forward. South Korea was under a military dictatorship until the 1980s; it’s now one of the freest, most prosperous nations in the world (and really good at Starcraft).
Only time will tell. My prayers go out to the people of North Korea, and I urge my readers to pray for them, as well—and that President Trump and Kim Jong-un have the wisdom and discretion to act in the best interest of liberty.
Retired U.S. Navy Captain Jerry Hendrix has a piece up at National Review Online entitled “Space: The New Strategic Heartland” in which he urges Congress and the Department of Defense to establish a “Space Force” and to get serious about space exploration and colonization. It’s an excellent read, and makes some compelling points about why space is, truly, the final frontier.
Captain Hendrix bases his analysis in “heartland theory,” developed in 1904 by British geographer Halford Mackinder. 114 years ago, Mackinder argued that the “heartland” of future geostrategic conflict was Eurasia. Decades later, as Hendrix explains, former President Richard Nixon wrote that the Middle East and Africa—with their vast mineral resources—would hold the key to determining the victor in the Cold War (influence in these regions, Nixon argued, would determine whether capitalism or communism would prevail).
Now, Hendrix makes the case that space is the new “heartland,” and makes some intriguing points to that effect. Anyone who has followed the career and writings of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will be familiar with these arguments; indeed, a decade ago I wrote a rough draft of a paper arguing for lunar colonization on similar grounds.
To summarize, they are as follows:
China and Russian are looking to disrupt America’s dominance in communications, entertainment, and strategic defense, which we enjoy because of our preeminence in space—think of how disruptive it would be to lose communications or military satellites, which the Chinese are already targeting.
Automated construction and manufacturing in space provide the capability to build and launch deep-space rockets more cheaply (the gravity of the moon is one-sixth that of Earth’s), allowing for more cost-effective space exploration.
The free market will—and already has!—get more involved in space exploration. There are meteorites with more gold than has ever been mined on Earth. Consider, too, China’s dominance of rare-earth metals, which are abundantly available in the space, particularly the asteroid belt.
If space is going to remain a competitive domain, the United States will have to take the lead. I shudder to think of a Chinese controlled-moon, for example. I know it sounds batty, but do you really want the Chinese constructing a lunar death laser? They have the manpower and disregard for human life to do it.
There is room, too, for a conservative approach to space exploration, and we shouldn’t reflexively recoil at government involvement in this regard, so long as it’s done the right way. Just like the Homestead Act of 1862 (Gingrich actually proposed a “Homestead Act” for the moon!) or the role of the federal government in leasing lands for railroad companies, Congress can provide the framework for space exploration and colonization that would allow the free-market and private enterprise to kick in and work their magic.
What we should avoid is a bureaucracy that is so obsessed with “safety” and “diversity” that our space program is stillborn in its terrestrial cradle. Fortunately, there is a way forward, and Newt Gingrich delivers again.
Shortly after winning the South Carolina Republican presidential primary in 2012, Gingrich gave a speech in Florida in which he promised that, by the end of his second term as President (sigh… if only), we’d have a colony on the moon. When he gave this speech, I began hooping like a silver-backed gorilla—and immediately donated $100 from my meager 2012 salary to his campaign. He was widely derided for this position, but John F. Kennedy made a similarly bold claim in his young presidency—and, sure enough, by 1969, we had a man on the moon.
Since then, Gingrich has remained a strong supporter of space exploration. Indeed, he’s written on the topic twice recently, and I would encourage readers to explore his ideas further (I should note that I am heartened to see so many writers suddenly taking an interest in space exploration again).
The economy is swinging again, American patriotism is back in style, and President Trump is a bold reformer who dreams and acts big (league). America is perfectly poised to build upon our already substantial lead in space exploration, and frontiers are our specialty.
Let’s go to Mars! Let’s build a colony on the moon! Let’s mine asteroids!
Remember when President Obama, in Carter-esque fashion, gravely warned the American people that 2% annual GDP growth was the new normal?
The parallels between Obama and Carter’s doom-and-gloom economic forecasts–and between Reagan and Trump’s pro-American optimism–once again come to the fore with the latest predictions from the Atlanta Fed.
A piece at Breitbart notes that annualized GDP growth for the second quarter of 2018 is a whopping 4.8%. And that’s despite threats of a trade war.
Maybe the scare over tariffs is premature, or the United States is in a position to benefit from playing some hardball on trade. Free trade is not an unalloyed good, though it is certainly beneficial, and tariffs are not unequivocally bad.
Mostly, though, it seems that the tax cuts are working. America is getting its economic groove back. Trump is making America great again by getting government out of the way and letting business thrive.
The Portly Politico 