D-Day in the Culture Wars Is Looming

The Left Are Throwing Everything They’ve Got in the Counter-Attack to 2016. Andrew Breitbart coined the dictum that politics is downstream from culture. The left might sneer at Breitbart for being a wicked conservative who founded the right-wing nutjob fake news hub that bears his name (conveniently forgetting, of course, that he also co-founded the …

The Trump Doctrine and the Opportunity of the 21st Century

2020 Will Potentially Set the Template for the 21st Century. Subjecting myself to the ordeal of listening to Australia’s taxpayer-funded leftist propaganda network ABC radio, some time ago, I listened with mixed bemusement and exasperation as their “foreign policy expert” whined that Trump was upsetting the established world order. “That’s the whole point, you idiot!” …

Time to Stop Laughing at Sleepy Joe

In the three weeks since this article was first published, the Democrats have made their choice. Sanders' presidential hopes are over. The Dems obviously weren't prepared to be crazy-brave. Remember when the left-media were wall-to-wall mocking of candidate Donald Trump in 2016? Worst, of course, were the late-night “comedians” (so-called). Whether it was John Oliver …

Bad Orange Man Cheats the Left Again – and Rewrites the Rulebook

The NPCs are Angry Because the Bad Orange Man is NOT a Warmonger. A Devil's Curmudgeon. Imagine if the left demanded a war and Trump didn’t come? It’s not quite what happened last month, but it’s near enough. While the Trump-deranged left stopped short of actually demanding a war with Iran, it was plain that …

Fake News: How We Got Where We Are

First Donald Trump broke the media, then he made them a laughing-stock. Despite their endless self-regard, everyone knows who the real fake news are now. The 2004 comedy Anchorman opens with the observation that “there was a time…when people believed everything they heard on TV”. The joke is grounded in reality: in the early 70s, …

Will Australia Spring a November Surprise?

How will the survey turn out? I honestly don't know. Political prognostication is a game I prefer not to play, as a rule. But recent developments suggest that what once seemed like a sure bet may not be such a foregone conclusion, after all ...Do read on ...

Of Curmudgeonly Interest This Week – 20 February 2017

A bit of a break I've been travelling on family business, so I missed last week's post of Things Interesting. Here's a couple that I did manage to catch. The Age of Civilizational Self-Loathing Many years ago, I worked in a printing factory. The storeman was a lovely, gentlemanly Indian named Alastair. Talking on the …

Making Rods For Their Own Backs

My latest for Whale Oil blog Purveyors of narrow-minded identity politics fail to grasp the strength of truly liberal democracies, which is that their laws and institutions are crafted for the benefit and protection of everybody. Groups who, when in power, shape political weapons to bully and harass their opponents into submission are invariably dismayed …

Throwing Bricks at the Mirror

Nearly 100 years on, gangs of black-clad, anti-democracy thugs are again rampaging through the streets, smashing property and beating up their opponents.

For Who’s A Jolly Good Fellow?

John Lewis may be a "Civil Rights Icon", but that shouldn't make him immune to criticism. The Three Cheers fallacy occurs when people are too enamoured of a person's reputation to critically think about exactly what they're saying. "Never be a fan," Christopher Hitchens said - because when people start worshipping, they stop thinking. Exclusive …