190 Comments
Aug 26Liked by Chris Bray

"The performance of whiteness and masculinity is powerful stuff. We should use it against the Houthis. "

Ha ha! What an absolutely superb line.

Expand full comment

Oh, Can't the Rainbow Brigade man these vessels and fight the enemy?

Can the trannies not fight simple terrorists who use drones and missiles?

Can the ... Oh, who am I kidding? The modern military can't fight its way out of a wet paper bag.

Groups like the Houthis are the reason the Marines were invented. Take the fight to enemy shores and wipe them out.

The rest of our problems are the problems that usually happen when you get rid of hard-working white men and replace them with people who Didn't Earn It.

Expand full comment

I do t think they’re capable of “manning” anything… 🙄

Expand full comment

Nice one!

Expand full comment

"Groups like the Houthis are the reason the Marines were invented. Take the fight to enemy shores and wipe them out."

Are the Houthis attacking civilian American ships in the Red Sea?

Did the Houthis attack American warships BEFORE American warships attacked the Houthis?

Or is the vile neocon/PC-Prog lash-up inserting American military into situations that do not involve American interests? That is, is America being used as a patsy by foreign interests?

The Barbary pirates attacked and destroyed civilian American ships, captured and enslaved Americans, BEFORE we sent the US Navy to deal with them. Hugely different from the Houthis.

Expand full comment
founding
Aug 26Liked by Chris Bray

Freedom of the seas is hugely critical to the complex Western civilization.

Expand full comment

"Freedom of the seas is hugely critical to the complex Western civilization."

Really? Ok. Why is the US expending blood and treasure halfway around the world for "the complex Western civilization"? Let The Complex Western Civilization build a navy and spill their citizens' blood and spend their treasure defending "freedom of the seas" in the Red Sea.

Absolutely no American interest at stake there. We produce as much oil as we need, and can produce more, if need be.

The Houthis are attacking Israeli and European interests, NOT American interests.

Israel and the EU spend their money on elaborate social safety nets--free healthcare, free universities, welfare payments, and more--and rely on American taxpayers to fund their military defense, and on American blood and treasure to respond when they blunder into conflicts.

It's NOT an American conflict. If "freedom of the seas" is so important, let those involved hash it out amongst themselves. None of America's business.

We are being invaded from the southern border, we are engulfed in crime, cartels are moving into the country. Use our treasure to protect America. Let those affected deal with the Houthis.

Expand full comment

"Produce as much oil as we need"?? I worked on the rigs in North Dakota in the late 70's just before we drilled into the Bakken preserve. We would've had all the oil we need and enough to supply others, instead of what we have since Biden choked off production, then he begs the Saudis to sell us oil when gas prices get high enough to affect election outcomes, and sold over a million gallons of our Strategic Reserve to China, meanwhile push and pass green new deals that make the Al Gore types rich but do nothing for the citizens who fund it, yet we have to listen to lies all day about climate change. Trump is the only candidate who was doing something about it. If we drill, frack, and build Keystone we won't have to worry too much about Houthis seajacking oil tankers. But it would do us well if America had a tough rep again. Walz will fix that! Says nobody ever except huge liars.

Expand full comment

Excellent points.

But a miss on this one: "...we won't have to worry too much about Houthis seajacking oil tankers."

We, Americans have NO REASON to worry about Houthis doing anything to oil tankers in the Red Sea.

That oil AIN'T coming to the USA. It's going to Israel, and other places that Israel deals with. NO American interest whatsoever.

We're sitting on oceans of oil. We just need to get it out of the ground.

Let the squabbling fools in the Middle East fight their millenia-old battles. None of our business.

Expand full comment
Aug 27·edited Aug 27

The US cannot be allowed to become independent of the world. If we did we’d lose a bunch of our excuses to stick our noses in everything.

Expand full comment

Unfortunately, fracking is pretty devastating to the environment (water sources, etc.)

Expand full comment

Nailed it! First thing pdt will do, before he is inaugurated,is get us out of all the conflicts created by the deep state/ cia complex. That means all of them. I believe this time he will close dozens of bases, quickly.

Expand full comment

Our Navy should be blowing every vessel out of the water that even thinks about looking crosseyed at the U.S., or any of its allies, if for no other reason than keeping our sailors well trained.

Expand full comment

That attitude worked okay in Afghanistan--where the enemy was wearing sandals and carrying an AK, and we were streaking around in jets, helicopters, tanks, and shooting 20mm cannons and Hellfires down their chimneys. The GWOT totally spoiled both the DOD and civilians--who expect American military to just steamroller anybody.

We ain't in Afghanistan any more. A motley crew like the Houthis have sophisticated missiles and drones that can overwhelm a modern warship, and have.

If we keep antagonizing groups around the world, we could very well have an anti-ship ballistic missile attack on a carrier--that'll go down.

Strutting around where we don't belong, provoking others, is a sure-fire way to kick-off WW3.

American interests, ONLY, are what our military should protect. Get the hell out of the Red Sea. Patrol the Rio Grande! There you can blast all threats.

Expand full comment

We have the ability to dominate the Houthis if we want. We had the ability to crush Afghanistan as well but chose to try to win “hearts and minds” instead and were ultimately defeated. Houthi controlled areas in Yemen should be firebombed and then flooded with hungry, feral pigs captured from the southern United States. After that, the Gays for Palestine should be given the option to deliver humanitarian aid to whatever Muslim population is left.

I'm not opposed to putting soldiers on the Rio Grande and dispensing brutal consequences for any man, woman, and child that tries to sneak into this country. That wouldn't take a whole lot more than changing the rules of engagement for the border patrol, supplementing manpower with national guardsmen, and finishing the wall.

If we withdraw our forces from around the world someone, probably China, will fill that void. We should maintain forces around the world but demand payment from the nations we are protecting. South Korea should give us their lunch money for services rendered. We should have control over Iraqi oil fields and their crude should be helping to keep the cost of filling my F350 as low as possible. We will need more refineries, which will be easier if the EPA is liquidated.

I'm not opposed to off ramping military presence if the nations we are protecting are willing to stand up their own military and commit to maintaining it. The lack of strategic withdrawal will only hurt us in the long run.

Expand full comment

The Houthis are doing this because western nations supply weapons to Saudi Arabia, who use those weapons against the Houthis.

The Houthis are allied with Iran.

Same western nations that support Saudi have also flooded Ukraine with weapons to kill Russians, who are allied with Iran.

So the Houthis are punishing the enemies of their allies.

Think about these second and third order effects, because the Biden admin and the US foreign policy establishment certainly doesn’t….because they’re morons.

Expand full comment

American interests have been betrayed ever since the USS Maine

Expand full comment

And especially since the USS Liberty!

Expand full comment

By deception thou shalt do war

Expand full comment

I feel obliged to offer some pushback on your use of "white" in your last sentence.

Had you said "hard working men", I would have given this comment a like.

My understanding of your comment is that you are responding to the left's demonization of "whiteness" and of masculinity. I get that.

But please don't respond to that with further racialization. That's just taking the bait.

A little over forty percent of the members of the U.S. Marines Corps are "non-white."

Expand full comment

Please capitalize "White." To use lower case is a microaggression.

Expand full comment

Everything is a microaggression.

Breathing is a microaggression.

It's microaggressions all the way down.

Expand full comment

How this ends? Debasement, dishonor, debacle, destruction, disaster…. El Gato had a good article last week about how unserious & lacking in knowledge & competence the clowns of the entire FJB administration are. Couple that with the mental midgets portion of the citizenry that are all in for Kackala & Tampon Timmy & America is in a very, very dangerous place.

Expand full comment

There are things I would dearly like to say that would logically follow your comment Ms. Cindi. And you would likely agree with as well. Let's just say... it's a very good thing we are the best armed populace in the world.

Expand full comment

I can imagine killing the cruel and the threatening. But to imagine picking up a weapon and killing another American—just imagining that leaves me in tears [80-year-old white male, if it makes any difference]. Of this the reader can be sure: it will not end well.

I wish you the best.

Expand full comment

As w/ the scamdemic, the other side does not hesitate to demonize, dehumanize, separate & exclude decent people & if they retain power, all of that will be coming back

Expand full comment
Aug 26·edited Aug 26

Exactly. We traditionalists, for lack of a better term, didn't start this civil war. War has been made upon us. There is nobility in being reactionary. Reactionaries just want to be left alone.

If what VHMan fears, and if what we all dread and worry may come to pass, does, it will not have been our fault.

Expand full comment

Fully agree, Bobby. ESPECIALLY about wanting to be left alone!

Expand full comment

VHMan, I wouldn't want to have to pick up arms or use force against anyone. Ever. I don't believe in the death penalty much as some evil criminals deserve it. There is a distinct difference between defense and offense. And the two..cruel/threatening people and American people are most definitely not mutually exclusive.

If you desire to take from me or block me from my inalienable rights, you aren't an American. I will defend and have defended your right (the collective "you") to say what you will within the limits of the law.

The fact that we are the best armed populace in the world is precisely why we haven't fallen the way the UK and the EU have. Yet.

It would be and will be a tragedy when we arrive at that precipice. For surely the left/Marxist/prog/rad Dem are herding us to that Cliff of Mohr. It will break my heart. But it will be their choice, not mine. Thank you for bringing that up. I was being flippant and thought I was funny, but it is a serious and potentially deadly scenario that no one should take lightly.

Expand full comment

Agree, PB except DemoncRATs have been chipping away at 2A for a long time now; I fear what another 4 years would bring - esp under an outright communist like OBummer-Harris

Expand full comment

I most wholeheartedly agree!! We are millimeters from totalitarianism.

Expand full comment

Oh, Ms. Cindi… did you hear about the Kansas woman who won her court case to keep her machine gun? It’s not huge in the big picture… but then it really is… if you know what I mean.

Expand full comment

Fully automatic rifles are perfectly legal so long as you have an NFA stamp.

Expand full comment

Wrong. Automatic weapons are perfectly legal. That dot at the end is called a period. The judge made the point, succinctly. Which puts the existence of the atfe in jeopardy, thankfully. And they truly do not have any authority. Do you think it’s ok that you have to be “approved” by some bureaucratic fuck before you can own a weapon?

Expand full comment

Easy boy!

Expand full comment

I have not heard; I will try to look it up, unless you have a handy link

Expand full comment

I doubt a Chinese or Iranian soldier will set foot on American soil. Their objectives are simply to remove American forces from their parts of the world and to reduce our influence. If they cam impoverish us to boot, so much the better for them.

Expand full comment

They are already here.

Expand full comment

who needs to send soldiers when you've already sent an army of immigrants who, in collusion with the dems, can impoverish us without a single shot being fired

Expand full comment

The soldiers won't set foot tomorrow, but they've sent soldiers to start laying out the welcome mats. That's not hyperbole.

Expand full comment

Both China and Iran are imperialist countries that aim to conquer the world, the former with a communist supremacy ideology and the latter with an Islamic supremacist ideology. They have already sent thousands of military age men and women to America who the Obama-Biden-Harris administration have admitted through our southern non-border. Just wait until they receive the signal.

Expand full comment

That will be funny, when they receive that signal. Because go green then for us.

Expand full comment

Come right out and say it, fuck em. I’m looking forward to the revolution, and targeting traitors specifically.

Expand full comment

One we decided smothering the truth in favor of good feelz and self-regard was the highest virtue of the land the rest of the story writes itself.

We see those 50 years of warring on the "patriarchy" and masculinity in favor of the sweet lies of blank-slate egalitarianism were fine until the strong girls started getting their trophies stolen by broken bois with duct tape and suddenly something must be done!

Much of current year angst could be defined by our struggle to put just the right amount of Progressive toothpaste back into the tube so that we can keep our goodfeelz without the decay of all those little lies.

What's interesting to see of late is that the demons are re-igniting the war on masculinity as they must certainly see that there is a reactionary movement apace.

The question of our time just might be whether or not that reaction will lead us out toward the truth or be folded into an even darker totalitarianism.

There is a lot of focus on the obvious pathologies of our enemies and the absurd, brutal, and clumsy methods of placing their pink boots on our necks. Its low hanging fruit at this point. The memes create themselves.

And yet the fact that our enemies have been able to subjugate and imprison so many of us in their panopticon of lies demonstrates the autonomy of the entire System and its ever-converging boundless appetite for more.

The clowns we are allowed to see are not pulling the levers as we might imaging. The purpose of theater of our political and social institutions is to humiliate and demoralize and disenfranchise us while simultaneously conditioning us to the illusion that we have some say in that system and that the only way to live is in perpetual negotiation with that system.

Already we have collectively confirmed that we are willing to stay in their paddock if they dial it back just a little bit.

That belief is a big part of what is dangerous. Of course, none of my screed is to say you are wrong at all. Just to reinforce that we need to break our focus from the focal points that our enemies conjure up for us. They want us constantly triggered by the clowns and marching morons.

Instead, we need to focus our minds and spirits and good works toward those things we can control - and to cultivate and orient our virtues around the Truth in our own lives to both transcend their system and steward what is left of our people and way of live forward because when it does all fall down we need to be already living the Good Life we desire to see rise in the ashes.

Which is no small task.

Expand full comment

“50 years of warring on the ‘patriarchy’ and masculinity”

It’s been 78 yrs - the European Marxist/Post-Modernists arrived in the U.S. immediately after WWII. (Frankfurt School & Marcuse).

Expand full comment

We all lose track of time when we're having fun.

Expand full comment

Indeed Comrade! The early movers of what would become known as our Greatest Strength were ushered in on the euphoric post-war materialism that would spawn our present iterations of the big lie.

But given my age I felt compelled to account for the War only insofar as I have been alive to witness the glorious future promised by the belligerents that will arrive tomorrow.

Besides, the verbose liberties I take with my prose already glaze most people's eyes over without historical anchoring that tends to lead one into the rabbit warren of "How We Got Here".

Soon enough you have dug your way back into the Garden and that's obviously just my desire to make all women barefoot and pregnant in the Graden's kitchen making me sandwiches, hold the apple. Plus fig leaves are super itchy.

Once you start rolling back the timeline to Year Zero, not Current Year Zero of course, but the one before, you end up burning a bunch of Enlightenment philosophers at the stake and frankfurtly, even mostly awake Americans have certain mythologies about the righteousness of that intersection of the Western mind and the Western State, that are best avoided until the After Times when we can "unpack" the Enlightenment over rabbit charred on a pile of burning Victorian furniture.

Too many T-bones of sacred goats get in the way of at least solving for common ground with our present condition.

But I always appreciate a fellow traveler who understands that what we face pre-dates us and thus there also might be a lot of answers to our defining questions that reside in old books or old souls.

Nothing new under the sun and all that boring stuff that doesn't curry likes or clicks and tends to winnow the invites to the cul-de-sac BBQ down to the obligatory ones where they just need you to move your car so they kind of have to invite you.

Expand full comment

That Dangerous Variant, is an important critical viewpoint. One I haven't wanted to elucidate. You've done a fine and dare I say, noble job of truth telling. My hat's off to you.

Expand full comment
founding

Well said

Expand full comment

Amazing. Yet not surprising. Your readers might appreciate this, an attempt to illuminate industrial collapse up close.

https://mcrawford.substack.com/p/industrial-collapse-under-the-radar

There you’ll find a link to another piece in which I explain how a tail light repair on a Ford F150 could cost $5,600.

(Also, thanks, Chris, for your recent warm words for my book Why We Drive. I’m enjoying your Substack.)

-Matt

Expand full comment

The rest of your article is behind a paywall. Lame!

Expand full comment

Troll

Expand full comment

Just for you,Matthew, anyone that shops at grainger has an expense account from more than likely a govt or union shop, or is an idiot. I’m not insinuating you are, but 465 bucks for a mag base for dial indicator is right about where grainger would price it. And it probably says mititoyu on it, but it sure didn’t come from athol mass. So yeah, you need an indicator base, look at estate sales, garage sales, machine shops going out of business, but you never, ever,go to grainger. You’d be better off going on Amazon and getting a “good” one from an Asian country.

Expand full comment

Hello Mr. Mathew Crawford! I´m having a lot of fun listening to J,J. - the most LENINIST of the dissenters. And I don´t mean that as a put-down. This splintering and fracturing is THE MOST FASCINATING THING, and mirrors the same sort of thing that happens on THE LEFT, when the left is the underdog.

Expand full comment

Guess the Houthis did not get the toxic masculinity memo.

Expand full comment

lol, like

Expand full comment

We have always been at war with East Biden.

Expand full comment

This is exactly what a government of morons looks like. I seriously believe they tried to kill Trump

and used their very best people to try to pull it off. Look around the world, it was bound to happen eventually. The Peter principle has finally pushed the most incompetent people all the way to the top, and crowded out what little competence remained. We are all ok at the local level. The trouble is now squarely where it can do the most damage…to itself. Pop some corn, stock up on non perishables, ammo and water, the main event is about to begin.

Expand full comment

What are the odds that Kennedy survives the next few months? Did the thought cross anyone else’s mind during his speech that they would try to assassinate him in short order? Sure enough “Joe Biden” ended his short lived Secret Service protection in the fastest moving government action in history.

Expand full comment

RFK stomped on SO many toes in that talk that I was (irrationally?) afraid someone was going to enter the room & shoot him right then.

Expand full comment

you & me both

Expand full comment

Old Joe Kennedy's money has become significantly diluted in the third generation: too many Kennedys, not enough money - probably - for RFK, Jr, to hire his own bodyguards. Every time you see Elon Musk in public, you know that the half dozen or more guys around him are bodyguards. Maybe he can finance some for Kennedy.

Paul McCartney has a six person ( probably all male ) bodyguard contingent, and who can blame him?

Expand full comment

I would think that now the RFKjr is in Trump’s entourage, he’s got SS coverage. Not to mention DJTs own security folk (who I have much more faith in).

Expand full comment

I seriously believe that it's possible that Cheatle or the dork who replaced her and was apparently determining these things before Butler, undersupplied Trump in the hopes that an attempt would be made by someone, but Crooks a hired assassin? This is Oswaldia. Both men saw themselves as hopeless f*ckups, and such people can alter history. Remember Squeaky Fromme? Sara Jane Moore? Arthur Bremer? Hinckley? Giuseppe Zangara? Leon Czol - whatever the f*ck his name was? ( Leon is an example of how a mellifluous name can make you a star. Everyone remembers John Wilkes Booth. )

Expand full comment

No, I’m thinking that was the plant, and he didn’t have to score. But he jumped the gun, and the cia sniper missed, killing an innocent. That was an attempted murder by the cia, no doubt in my mind.

Expand full comment

Well, I don't believe it for a moment. “…the CIA sniper missed…?” If so, he joins history alongside all the grassy knoll shooters on November 22, 1963. All of these guys seem to have the gift of invisibility.

Expand full comment

Yep, when it all folds, we, the men of industry, will put it back together. It’s the only way it works.

Expand full comment

I live near what used to be a shipbuilding powerhouse, Avondale shipyards. Up to the 1980’s it employed thousands of skilled shipbuilders. Avondale is a mere shadow of its former glory. The destruction seems intentional.

Expand full comment

I used to work at Bath Iron Works. I felt like a character in a Kafka story. So much waste and incompetence!

Expand full comment

Same here. Charlestion (SC) Naval Shipyard employed 1000's of local tradesmen. When we got the news that it would close, the whole area went into mourning.

Expand full comment

The intended or unintended consequences of government policy. We are the hollow man.

Expand full comment
founding

"while WOMEN and other men strongly favor Harris".....NOT ALL WOMEN! Only those who have the shallow perception that she has or can accomplish ANYTHING.....while there are MANY facets to the candidates, FOCUS on policy, not personality/whiteness/JOY, people!!

Expand full comment

On the plus side, my Early Girl plant gave me 5 ripe tomatoes today. The beefsteak plant has a Ron Jeremy hanging but not yet ready to harvest.

Thank you for illustrating the disconnect between our MSM and the real state of the world over there.

The most amazing aspect is that the "5 Eyes" countries have this intel, plus much much more. Yet it goes unreported in the captive MSM.

You in the audience are being intentionally blinded to actual events. For a specific purpose.

Expand full comment

Well, let's pray Trump wins. Seems like a hefty dose of "toxic masculinity" is exactly what's required right now.....many folks here in the UK are really hoping Trump gets in - where the US leads, the UK follows.

Expand full comment
founding

I am an American with many family members who are European citizens (most in UK) And to a person they are saying the same thing.

It's almost in a strange way their "last" hope. Which is really sad to think about because they are hoping a leader not if their own but of another country can "help" them. They've all just given up on their leaders...and to an extent their fellow-citizens.

Expand full comment

That’s true throughout the world, Ryan. I’ve heard it from everywhere, from our friends in Australia, NZ, Canada are all hoping for a return to the trump time. It did create world peace for four years. That wasn’t luck.

Expand full comment

The bad news from the Navy is such a canary in the coal mine.

Wow.

Expand full comment
author

Exactly. It hints at the state of a whole bunch of systems and structures.

Expand full comment

A lot of that is the Navy’s fault for focusing too much on high tech capabilities rather than buildability and availability.

Navy needs a bunch of destroyer missile platforms that can survive a hit or two and are relatively easy to repair and upgrade.

Instead, they want $13,000,000,000 super carriers that take 7 years to build and represent singular points of failure.

Expand full comment

Chris, it’s obvious what the United States needs to project to restore world order is DIVERSITY since that is our real strength.

Expand full comment

It is, in some ways, reminiscent of how the US initially handled the Barbary Coast pirates and slavers, after Britain and France both showed themselves to be completely unable - at the height of their power as colonial empires (whatever that phrase means nowadays) - to deal with said non-white slavers and pirates, who were preying on shipping and conducting slave-raids towards European territories.

Stumbling, fumbling, too little and when they finally try force, it ends with forking over money anyway since there's no support at home for what a real military solution would entail.

Expand full comment

And I think it was a Mainer who got the job done …

Expand full comment

Meanwhile, in other news, the Ukraine army is on the verge of total collapse. In a desperate diversionary tactic by Ukraine, what’s left of their best soldiers were sent into the Kursk region of Russia along with 2,000 NATO (American?) troops. Casualties are 40%.

Expand full comment

I came across the word “enshittening” maybe about a month ago. And here is yet another example. The enshittening of the Navy.

(I think I am going to be using that word quite a lot from now on.)

Expand full comment

It was either Rod Dreher or Robert Malone I believe and they may have gotten it from someone else.

Expand full comment

Enshittification. The Boing Boing guy. Doctorow.

Expand full comment

Tech platform enshittification via neoliberalism.

Expand full comment