Only One Tool

because arguments don't work

A little more than a week ago, Axios published a darkly comical story about the conflict between the Houthis and our near-trillion-dollar-annually American military, the Most Powerful Military in the History of the World™. The conclusion: the Pentagon is scared.

Yemen is among the poorest countries in the world, the Houthis are a minority faction that controls only a portion of that country, we’re nearly a full year into an undeclared war on them, and…they’re winning. We can’t stop them from firing at ships in the Red Sea, with dire consequences for global trade. The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the bizarre decision from “Joe Biden” to sharply escalate the war in Ukraine with the authorization of long-range missile attacks into Russia using American-provided missiles, assuming that anyone told the “President of the United States” that he did that, has resulted in a retaliatory Russian escalation and the use of ballistic missiles to attack Ukraine. And a long proxy war between Israel and Iran has recently turned into unmasked direct attacks, a dramatic escalation of a new hot war that began last year with the worst single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

Now, the punchline to the sick joke: the increasingly frenzied news media warnings that the return of Donald Trump to the presidency might create…chaos. Here’s the longtime liberal pundit Bill Press a few days ago (before Gaetz withdrew), calling on the Senate to confirm all of Trump’s appointees — and to confirm them good and hard, so the horror they create with their clownish incompetence can be shoved up the ass of the backward country that was dumb enough to vote for Orange Man:

Will they create chaos? Absolutely. Under Gaetz, the FBI will be gutted. Those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 will be released from prison. Under Gabbard, our allies will no longer share intelligence with the U.S., making us more vulnerable to foreign and domestic attacks. Under Hegseth, the Pentagon’s top generals will be sent packing and troops will be patrolling American cities. Under Kennedy, the world’s best scientists and doctors will be fired and, without vaccines, we could well face a deadly measles outbreak.

Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be painful and people are going to get hurt. But that’s no reason to reject Gaetz and company. Again, this is what the American people wanted: sheer chaos. So bring it on, and the uglier, the better.

“Will they create chaos?” he asks, as ballistic missiles hit Dnipro and post-mRNA health implodes. Bill Press has crawled so far up his own ass that he’s making circles up there, passing himself on his fifth lap around the duodenum.

He has company. At the New York Times, King of Earnest Midwits David French warns that Trump and his base “are both aligned against the pragmatists,” the “serious people” who make wise and disciplined policy, the adults who are so unwelcome in Trumpworld.

Nothing will change this narrative. No mere factual reality can possibly intervene. If Kiev and Warsaw vanish behind a veil of mushroom clouds in December, the New Republic and The Atlantic and the New York Times will still be full of headlines about the danger of instability occurring after January 20. Here’s the front page of the New York Times website today, and look this over carefully:

Elon Musk, Elon Musk, Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump, the politics of transgender rights. Below all of that, way down toward the bottom:

TRUMP CLASHES OVER TRANS RIGHTS AS CONTROVERSY SWIRLS <sm>also risk of nuclear war grows following ballistic missile attacks</sm>. It’s an aside, the 23rd most important story of the day.

Our Anne Applebaum class, the cultural formation of our serious people who play intellectuals on television — just ask them — is dangerously, relentlessly, entirely deranged. They have no connection to reality, none. They don’t see the world. They put their hands on things, and break them, and don’t see what they’ve broken. “Trump Trump Trump,” the explain, as they light the building on fire. “All of this heat and smoke must be because of Donald Trump!” They are shockingly dangerous and reckless people, empty pose-strikers, and the performative Lisa Murkowski/Susan Collins act of gravely calling for responsible behavior is the gibbering of children who are shoving their fingers into the socket while cautioning you to behave. Similarly, a remarkable number of our leading public intellectuals have descended into paste-eating behavior of a kind that can’t possibly be exaggerated. Here, watch Run Ben-Ghiat analyze Pete Hegseth. If this woman came over for dinner, I’d make her cut her food with a butter knife, and shovel it up with a big spoon. “Ruth Ben-Ghiat is coming for dinner — where are the plastic cups?”

Ditto the astonishing experience of watching California’s sociopathic elected officials present themselves as the political center of the bold resistance to Trump’s horrors. Everything these people have touched is dying. They do nothing well. They know nothing. They have no successes of any kind on their record. And they’re extremely confident that they’re the best of America, the brightest lights in the political culture.

So.

There’s a thing that I’ve done, over and over, that doesn’t work and isn’t going to work. Take the last thing I posted here, reviewing and rejecting claims that Trump’s proposed changes to military policy and leadership are shockingly, dangerously unprecedented. Over and over again, I’ve made factual arguments, using historical sources that I’ve described carefully, with links so you can read the background for yourself.

That’s not it. It’s true, but it doesn’t do anything.

I’m extremely confident — bet my life confident — that the only tool that changes the culture of deranged political authority in American government, academia, and media is the emergence of a widespread culture of brutal derision. This “Trump’s loser appointees will cause CHAOS!” behavior is entirely performative. It’s a signaling behavior, a ritual of a self-credentialing new class — a status gesture, a claim of standing.

Derision digs a hole under the status-centered performance. We all have to make fun of them, every time they open their worthless mouths, relentlessly, with real contempt behind every word and gesture. We have to attack on all fronts, with a culture of loathing for people who are always wrong and always completely self-assured, simultaneously illiterate and pretentious. They’re hurting us, and we’re putting up with it. Howl your contempt into their slack faces.