Category Archives: Politics

In Awe of Such Mind Warping Ability

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With the conservative majority’s Second Amendment test requiring states to justify gun measures with historical analogues, Hawaii and other states have turned to the Black Codes to justify gun control efforts.

At Tuesday’s arguments, Justice Neil Gorsuch and other conservative justices appeared reluctant to credit them given their racist origins. 

Hawaii points to anti-poaching laws enacted near the nation’s founding and gun restrictions Louisiana passed in 1865 as part of its Black Codes.  

“They wanted to disarm the Black population in order to help the Klan terrorize them and law enforcement officers in that period in that region. They wanted to put them at the mercy of racist law enforcement officers,” Justice Samuel Alito said. 

“So is it not the height of irony,” he asked Katyal, “to cite a law that was enacted for exactly the purpose of preventing someone from exercising the Second Amendment right, to cite this as an example of what the Second Amendments protects.” 

Katyal said he agreed parts of the Black Codes did exactly that.

Zach Schonfeld
January 20, 2026
Conservative justices reluctant to credit Black Codes in Hawaii gun law case

One has to be in awe of people capable of such mind warping ability that they use a racist and unconstitutional law as supporting the assertion their law is constitutional. Did they think appealing to racist laws would make it more a palatable to the conservative justices? If so, it backfired, but it did appeal to one of the justices:

“So I guess I really don’t understand your response to Justice Gorsuch on the Black Codes,” Jackson, a Biden appointee, told Harris. “I mean, I thought the Black Codes were being offered here under the Bruen test to determine the constitutionality of this regulation. And it’s because we have a test that asks us to look at the history and tradition.”

“The fact that the Black Codes were, at some later point, determined themselves to be unconstitutional doesn’t seem to me to be relevant to the assessment that Bruin is asking us to make.

I have given up trying to make sense of this argument. I have far more important things to do. I need to clip my fingernails.

Experience a Sudden Increase in Posterior Luminosity

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The matter is simple. Hawaii passed a law that, in practice, prohibits the state’s concealed carry permit holders from exercising their right to armed self-defense in virtually any location outside of their homes. Hawaii knows well that this law violates both the spirit and letter of Bruen v. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, the Supreme Court’s 2022 landmark case on public carry. It just does not care.  

Now, the state should brace itself for a more-than-deserved judicial head-bopping. 

Amy Swearer
January 23, 2026
SCOTUS likely to head-bop Hawaii over gun rights

All the reports I have heard say the oral arguments went well for the good guys.

In addition to getting their head bopped I think some other corrective measures are warranted. I would like to suggest all of the following applied as near as concurrently as is practical to each of the politicians who participated in this injustice:

  • Bitch slapped
  • Britches dusted
  • Ears boxed
  • Experience a sudden increase in posterior luminosity
  • Get their hide tanned
  • Have their sit-down region encouraged to reconsider their life choices
  • Knuckles rapped.
  • Receiving a cuff upside the head
  • Taken to the woodshed
  • Undergo some corrective percussion therapy

If they still continue to misbehavior they should be prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to prison.

Words as Spells

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The meme that the Left uses words as spells to produce useful outcomes has the most explanatory power.

They don’t care about meanings, they just want those outcomes.

Brotherhood @DiggingInTheDi1
Posted on X, January 21, 2026

I can believe that.

  • Gun free zone.
  • From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! *
  • If there are no guns there will be no gun violence.
  • Black lives matter.
  • Believe women.
  • Defund the police.
  • Affordable housing. **
  • Anything-phobic. **
  • Bipartisan. **
  • Climate change. **
  • Common sense gun control. **
  • Corporate greed. **
  • Deincarceration. **
  • Diversity. **
  • Equity. **
  • Existential threat to democracy. **
  • …
  • Reproductive freedom. **
  • Security.
  • Underrepresented. **
  • Undocumented immigrant. **
  • Workers’ rights. **

* From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs – Wikipedia
** The Progressive Left’s Glossary Of Terms, 2024 Edition – Scattered Shots

They Will Not Get Away with That

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You’re just relegating the Second Amendment to second-class status. I don’t see how you can get away with that.

Samuel Alito
January 20, 2026
Gun rights attorney reminds Sonia Sotomayor Hawaii part of United States

And, ultimately, I do not think they will get away with it. I think SCOTUS will rule in favor of the 2nd Amendment being a first-class right. I think Hawaii will comply with the letter of the ruling. And I think Hawaii will keep trying find more ways to get around SCOTUS decisions until they start getting prosecuted and convicted.

Feelings and Imagination

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They claim to be gun free zones. Well if we know anything about gun-free zones, looking at Australia and Brown, we know that they are not violence free zones. They are only defenseless zones where victims are left hopeless, without any hope of defending themselves.

Sam Farrington
New Hampshire State Representative
December 17, 2025
NH Republicans push to allow guns on college campuses

The response from the anti-gun people is telling:

State Rep. Nicholas Germana, D-Keene, a history professor at Keene State College, said Thursday he wouldn’t feel any safer if people coming on campus were packing firearms.

Any police response to an active shooter on a college campus would be fraught if armed bystanders became involved and crossfire broke out, he said.

“All the sudden police come on that campus and it’s a shootout at the OK Corral,” Germana said. “How do police know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is?”

Feelings and imagination. It is the best they can do. But it is enough to keep them going until they start getting prosecuted and convicted.

Sanctions on Countries Denying Basic Human Rights

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Bondi proved that Australia’s gun laws are broken and we can no longer delay fixing them, bipartisan support or not. There is no way that guns able to fire one bullet a second and eight bullets without reloading – which was the capacity of the guns used to kill 15 people and injure another 40 at Bondi – conform to either the spirit and intent of the NFA.

Leslie Cannold
January 15, 2026
Australia’s Broken Gun Laws: A Call for Reform – The Jewish Independent

I just have to shake my head. She wants to restrict the rate of fire to below one round per second? There go revolvers, pump shotguns, and lever action rifles. I’ll bet some people with some bolt action rifles could even match that speed. So, she would have it be only derringers, muzzle loaders, and double-barreled rifles and shotguns as legal guns?

But, of course, that will be considered a feature instead of a bug in her “fixing” of their gun laws.

If President Trump wanted to do some high-end trolling, I think he could get some really “quality” reactions if he advocated for sanctions on countries that deny their citizens basic human rights like the right to keep and bear arms. He should start with Australia, Canada, and England because, as of 250 years ago they had the same gun legal history as the U.S. I would find moving the Overton Window on people like Cannold to be quite entertaining.

Time to Remove this Government from Power

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Anybody who cares about liberty or property rights or just public safety in general, the focus should be removing this government from power.

Tracey Wilson
Vice-president of public relations for Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights
January 17, 2026
Ottawa unveils next steps in its national gun buyback program. Here are the details | CBC News

Some of the details are infuriating:

Compensation payments will be issued within 45 business days of a successful validation of the outlawed firearm. The official said the pool of funding is $248.6 million — which will let the government pay for about 136,000 outlawed firearms from individual Canadians.

There are an estimated 2 million of the outlawed firearms. The government only plans to pay for about one out of 15 of the guns. That isn’t what they repeatedly promised.

But perhaps they did the arithmetic and figured that was all the money they would need:

Last fall, the federal government launched a six-week voluntary pilot project in the Cape Breton region of Nova Scotia to test how the process would work. Officials were confident they would collect about 200 firearms.

Instead, just 25 were collected and destroyed, the Department of Public Safety revealed earlier this month. Responding to followup questions, the department said on Friday that 16 people participated.

If the participation rate is anything like it has been in Connecticut, California, Connecticut, New York, etc. then they should expect about a 5% compliance rate.

I will predict the next election will have a higher voter turnout than usual.

It might even move the talks on the Alberta and Saskatchewan Movements Push to Join U.S. as 51st State a little closer to reality.

Ideology Doesn’t Require Reality

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Communists are always certain of themselves because their certainty is ideological, not factual—and ideology doesn’t require reality.

Xi Van Fleet @XVanFleet
Posted on X, January 15, 2026

All successful politicians express great confidence. I do not know how many actually believe themselves. But I know a great many of them seemingly compulsively tell lies. Truth and reality are tough, really tough. So, the more connected to reality and the more truthful you are the less confidence you will express. That gives the communists and liars a big advantage in getting followers because they express the confidence that gives people a feeling of stability in an uncertain world.

The same can be said for anti-gun people. But anti-gun people are mostly communists, so that isn’t adding much.

It’s Almost Cute That They Think They’re Virtuous

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Again, yes the #MAGATs have all the guns. But #CivilWar2 ain’t gonna go they way they think it will. Because their enemy has al the brains. All the virtue. All the cities. And more troops than they’ve ever fucking seen.

Matt Walton @themattwalton
Via Rothmus @Rothmus on January 14, 2026

Matt Walton claims to be successful in life: Matt Walton – IMDb as an actor, writer, producer, director, “spokesguy”, and president of Ava Greyson Productions with a 1.5 million dollar house. Yet, he says something this stupid. What sort of alternate reality is he living in?

From the same X thread:

GINGERSKOL💜💛 @GlowSurfing

Yes, brains and brilliance would believe that smarts would win over guns!! 😆😆

Warren Green 🦅 🌎 ⚓️ @WarrenG76918837

Mitch @Mitch17472831
Matt doesnt understand being surrounded.

James Murdock @mmurdo431

Millennial Savage @Millennial_Sav

The first american civil war was republicans vs democrats to take away democrat slaves.

Civil War 2 will be republicans vs democrats to take away their illegal immigrant laborers.

Nothing has changed.

The two useful things I did get from Walton’s post is that he and his tribe view gun owners as their enemy and he considers the U.S. in a state of civil war. That will guide their actions. Prepare appropriately.

But I suspect this is the most insightful:

Carol Sheahan @CSheahan7924

It’s almost cute that they think they’re virtuous. That really is what this is all about: their obsessive need to faux virtue-signal.

It is as if they “know” their enemy is evil. Therefore, if they do/say something opposite of their enemy then it must be good. Their enemy could be arresting murderers and rapists and because they “know” their enemy is always evil, they are on the side of the violent criminals.

Making a Deal Shouldn’t be Difficult

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Greenland could become 51st state under proposed bill

Of course, the people living in Greenland do not currently want to be part of the U.S. but it seems to me it should not be that difficult to make a deal irresistible. There are only about 56,000 people living there. Offer everyone $1,000,000. That would be $56 billion. In comparison the Venezuela operation is estimated to have cost $25 to $30 billion.

That would be a lot more palatable to people than a military takeover and the U.S. would get the same or better outcome. Perhaps President Trump and others are floating the military (the “stick”) options to make a different approach (the “carrot”) all the more appealing.

The View that Crime and Violence are Inherently Bad

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I’ve come to realize the left doesn’t actually oppose crime or violence on principle.

They only oppose it when it hurts their own agenda or allies. Otherwise, they actually cheer it on when it’s inflicted upon their enemies, or just ignore it when it can’t be exploited.

For example, killing is good when it’s a health insurance CEO or Charlie Kirk. But it’s bad if it’s Renee Good or George Floyd (for the purpose of this argument, we will assume, as leftists do, that George Floyd was actually killed and did not OD). And killing doesn’t register at all when it’s someone like Iryna Zarutska being murdered by a black man.

The same goes with violence and crime as a whole. Violence against ICE is good. However, violence against ICE protestors is bad. And violence between black gangs is simply unimportant.

Furthermore, stealing from Walmarts and other big chains is good, but “stealing” from indigenous people is bad. Somalis stealing from taxpayers, on the other hand, should just not be discussed at all.

Unlike most people, the leftist views violence and crime as morally neutral tools, with acceptability or importance wholly dependent on who or what these tools are being used against.

Now, you might say, the right acts similarly! After all, weren’t the ICE agent’s and Kyle Rittenhouse’s killings excused by conservatives?

But no, actually, these cases are not the same. The right doesn’t excuse these killings because they were perpatrated by conservatives against progressives, which is how leftists view these scenarios.

It is not the “who” that provides justification for these killings in the eyes of the right, but rather, the “why,” which is self-defense.

Regardless of the parties involved, conservatives, in general, recognize the right to self-defense. Leftists, conversely, might only recognize self-defense as valid depending on who is using it.

Case in point, according to leftists, the ICE agent was not justified in shooting as self-defense after being hit with a car at a protest. But somehow, self-defense has been the go-to defense for Karmelo Anthony, a black teen who stabbed an unarmed student after getting into an argument at a campus sports event.

Again, for the leftist, the justification for crime and violence comes not from “why,” but from “who.”

And so, why does this matter? Why is this worth discussing?

It matters because, as we saw with Charlie Kirk, regardless of how law abiding or moral you may otherwise be, as long as you are conservative, it means the left will support any and all violence or theft that befalls you. Unfortunately, the justification for harming you comes from who you are: their enemy.

This phenomenon also explains the leftist indifference to the crimes of minority groups, like Somalis, or trans people, or illegal immigrants, or whatever other protected class. Put simply, in the left’s belief system, if a crime happens, but there’s no way to use it to gain political power, has it even really happened at all?

Finally, with these revelations in mind, the right must stop entering into debates with leftists assuming they share the view that crime and violence are inherently bad, because though they may deny it, the truth is they do not.

Lauren Chen @TheLaurenChen
Posted on X, January 11, 2026

Interesting assertion. We see further evidence to support this assertion from the beginnings of the USSR:

The USSR created hoodlums just as the UK is creating them now and our political opponents in the U.S. appear to want to create. What is even more chilling is that in the USSR the political leaders openly wrote about how the thieves “were allies in the building of communism”. This was because they were the enemy of those who owned property.

One might claim this is contradicted by another model. But that other model measures something a little different than the actions of the political left. It measured the claims of political groups.

Prepare appropriately.

Getting Spicy

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It’s time for the American people to organize and to utilize their Second Amendment right to protect themselves from what is clearly become an unaccountable and lawless agency that’s killing Americans.

Michael Fanone
Former D.C. Police officer
January 8, 2026
Pritzker dismisses ex-DC police officer’s call for Americans to use Second Amendment to protect against ICE
See also:

Now they think the Second Amendment is relevant?

Things could get spicy.

Prepare appropriately.

Another Model

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This explains some things (Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle):

Do clashes between ideologies reflect policy differences or something more fundamental? The present research suggests they reflect core psychological differences such that liberals express compassion toward less structured and more encompassing entities (i.e., universalism), whereas conservatives express compassion toward more well-defined and less encompassing entities (i.e., parochialism).

Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology, Study 3a. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Note. The highest value on the heatmap scale is 20 units for liberals, and 12 units for conservatives. Moral circle rings, from inner to outer, are described as follows: (1) all of your immediate family, (2) all of your extended family, (3) all of your closest friends, (4) all of your friends (including distant ones), (5) all of your acquaintances, (6) all people you have ever met, (7) all people in your country, (8) all people on your continent, (9) all people on all continents, (10) all mammals, (11) all amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds, (12) all animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae, (13) all animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms, (14) all living things in the universe including plants and trees, (15) all natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks, (16) all things in existence

My guess is both the political left and right will see this, agree with it, and claim moral superiority over their political opponents.

Here is the interpretation from someone on the right:

Psychology is interesting in a frightening sort of way.

My takeaway is there is no compromise between the viewpoints. One might as well try to find an acceptable compromise between a murdering rapist and their intended victim.

I need my underground bunker in Idaho to be complete.

Let’s Call All Democrats Criminals

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Let us concede that gun rights advocates have won the argument: guns don’t kill people, people do.

However, there is a certain class of people that merit a greater share of the blame for the mass casualty events our communities have endured. For lack of a more encompassing term let’s call them, “gun owners”. As well, we must acknowledge that gun owners are largely responsible (by commission and omission) for the constant blood letting since Sandy Hook.

Jude Folly
January 1, 2026
Guns Don’t Kill, Gun Owners Do – The Good Men Project

H/T to Lee Williams (The Worst Anti-gun Story of 2026 … So Far)

It is always nice to get a concession from these people. Now, with this concession, we can focus on the people problem.

Since more than twice as many convicts identify as Democrats as all other political parties combined, let’s call all Democrats criminals.

Agreed, that not entirely true, but the truth arrow is pointed in the correct direction.

Further evidence is this summary by Grok when asked for “All governors convicted of a felony in federal court, 1950–present, by party.”

Here is a list of U.S. governors (or former governors) convicted in federal court of felonies since 1950, based on reliable sources like Wikipedia’s list of state officials convicted of federal corruption offenses and compilations from sources tracking such cases (e.g., Center for Gaming Politics, cross-referenced reports). These focus on federal felony convictions tied to public corruption (e.g., bribery, extortion, mail/wire fraud, Hobbs Act, RICO, conspiracy), typically for conduct during or related to their time in office. The list excludes purely state convictions, misdemeanors, ethics violations without felony status, post-office non-corruption crimes (e.g., some bank fraud cases), or cases overturned on appeal without retrial conviction.

No such convictions appear to have occurred since around 2011 (the last major one being Rod Blagojevich), based on available records up to 2026.

The list is organized chronologically by year of conviction:

  • Otto Kerner, Jr. (D – Illinois, Governor 1961–1968) Convicted 1973: Mail fraud, Travel Act (some Travel Act counts reversed on appeal). Related to accepting bribes for racetrack favors while governor.
  • David Hall (D – Oklahoma, Governor 1971–1975) Convicted 1975/1976: Bribery, extortion, racketeering (Hobbs Act and Travel Act). Used influence to divert investments.
  • Ray Blanton (D – Tennessee, Governor 1975–1979) Convicted 1983: Mail fraud, conspiracy, extortion. Sold liquor licenses for profit.
  • Arch A. Moore, Jr. (R – West Virginia, Governor 1969–1977, 1985–1989) Convicted 1986/1990s (multiple): Extortion, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, tax fraud (Hobbs Act). Accepted illegal contributions and extorted funds.
  • Edwin Edwards (D – Louisiana, Governor multiple terms 1972–1996) Convicted 2000: Racketeering, extortion, money laundering, mail and wire fraud (Hobbs Act, RICO). Schemes during tenure.
  • John G. Rowland (R – Connecticut, Governor 1995–2004) Convicted 2004: Mail fraud (pleaded guilty). Corruption involving gifts and contracts.
  • Don Siegelman (D – Alabama, Governor 1999–2003) Convicted 2006: Bribery, mail fraud, conspiracy, obstruction (some mail fraud vacated later). Sold board seat for donations.
  • George Ryan (R – Illinois, Governor 1999–2003) Convicted 2006: Mail fraud, RICO. Corruption in contracts and licenses (Operation Safe Roads).
  • Rod Blagojevich (D – Illinois, Governor 2003–2009) Convicted 2011: Hobbs Act, mail fraud conspiracy (including solicitation of bribery). Attempted to sell U.S. Senate seat.

By party summary (felony federal corruption convictions in federal court, 1950–present):

  • Democrats: 7 (Kerner, Hall, Blanton, Edwards, Siegelman, Blagojevich, plus others in some lists if including variants like Hall’s timing).
  • Republicans: 3 (Moore, Rowland, Ryan).

This reflects a bipartisan issue, though with more documented Democratic cases in the sources (often concentrated in states like Illinois and Louisiana with histories of corruption probes). Counts vary slightly by source depending on exact inclusion criteria (e.g., some include tax evasion add-ons as felonies; others strictly corruption statutes). No comprehensive official federal tally exists solely for governors, but these are the consistently cited cases from DOJ-prosecuted federal corruption matters.

Do you see the pattern? Again, seven out of ten are Democrats. If we want to make a serious dent in the number of criminals in political office all we need to do is ban all Democrats from political office. And we would have just as much justification as people like Mr. Folly (what an appropriate name) would have for banning gun ownership.

If You’ve Never Watched Socialism Destroy Everything Around You

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I’m going to say this once, and I don’t care if it makes people uncomfortable.

If you have never lived in Venezuela
If you did not grow up there
If you did not watch your country collapse in real time
If you did not stand in food lines
If you did not watch your parents lose everything they built
If you did not have to leave your home with nothing

Then shut the fuck up.

You do not have an opinion.
Your opinion does not matter.
And you don’t get to lecture anyone about what’s happening there.

I’m Venezuelan.
I lived there most of my life until my early twenties.
I watched my country go from a functioning democracy to full blown socialism right in front of my eyes.

This is not politics to me.
This is trauma.

Before socialism, Venezuela was not perfect, but it worked.
There was trade.
There was money coming in.
There was investment from the US.
There were jobs.
There was food.
There was medicine.

My family had five businesses.
We had our home
We had investments.
We had a future.

Then the government started nationalizing everything.
Private companies were taken.
Foreign investors were pushed out.
Imports were blocked.
Price controls destroyed production.
Corruption exploded.

And everything died.

Not slowly.
Violently.

People didn’t suddenly become poor because of “capitalism” or “the US” or whatever bullshit slogan people like to repeat online.

They became poor because socialism destroyed incentives, destroyed production, destroyed trust, and destroyed hope.

People today in Venezuela are not debating ideology.
They are trying to survive.

They are trying to find food.
Trying to find medication.
Trying to keep their families alive.

So when I see people in the West posting from comfortable homes, full fridges, stable currencies, and safe streets talking about “imperialism” or “US bad” or “Trump this or that”

No.
It’s not complicated.
You’re just ignorant.

China is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Russia is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Cartels are not rebuilding Venezuela.

They are stealing.
They are extracting.
They are draining what’s left.

If the US comes in and reinvests
If refineries get rebuilt
If infrastructure gets restored
If imports open back up
If food, water, and medicine become accessible again
If people can work and earn with dignity

Then yes.
Let them take all the oil they want.

Because at least something gets built instead of destroyed.

This is something to celebrate.
Not because it’s perfect.
But because for the first time in a long time, there is hope.

Hope that families can eat.
Hope that people don’t have to flee their country.
Hope that Venezuela can function again.

If you’ve never lived through a country collapsing
If you’ve never watched socialism destroy everything around you
If you’ve never had to leave your home because staying meant starvation

Then again
Shut the fuck up.

This isn’t theory.
This isn’t politics.
This is lived experience.

Stephen Subero
Posted on Facebook, January 4, 2026

More food for thought on the topic.

Your Models are Obsolete

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Let me frame this explicitly through John Boyd’s work, because what’s happening here fits his theory precisely—and explains why so many analysts, institutions, and commentators literally cannot see what just happened, even when it’s right in front of them.

1. Boyd’s real insight wasn’t the OODA loop — it was paradigm warfare

Most people reduce Boyd to:

  • “OODA loop = faster decision cycles”
    That’s superficial.
    Boyd’s real contribution was this:

Victory comes from shattering the enemy’s mental model of reality faster than they can adapt.
He argued that:

  • Humans do not reason from facts → they reason from mental models
  • Evidence is filtered through the model, not the other way around
  • When a model is threatened, people defend the model, not the truth
    That’s why, as you said:
  • Astronomers clung to perfect circles
  • Clerics clung to geocentrism
  • Entire academic careers were spent patching a broken model instead of replacing it

Boyd called this destructive deduction: endlessly adjusting assumptions to preserve a dying framework.

2. Why paradigm shifts are invisible while they are happening

Boyd was explicit about this:
People cannot see a new paradigm from inside the old one.
Why?
Because:

  • The old paradigm defines what is even allowed to be real
  • Anything outside it is labeled “illegal,” “impossible,” “unthinkable,” or “crazy”
    So when someone acts outside the playbook, observers don’t see a new game —
    they see:
  • “lawlessness”
  • “chaos”
  • “norm breaking”
  • “authoritarianism”
  • “recklessness”
    Those are defensive labels, not analysis.

They are the immune response of a dying paradigm.

3. Apply this directly to modern politics (and Trump specifically)

The post–Cold War Western political paradigm assumes:

  • Power must be exercised through multilateral institutions
  • Enforcement must be indirect, slow, procedural
  • Leaders are constrained by “norms” more than outcomes
  • Sovereignty violations are unthinkable unless everyone agrees
  • Deterrence is symbolic, not personal
    This paradigm produced analysis tools that assume:
  • sanctions
  • statements
  • negotiations
  • gradual pressure
    Now enter an actor who:
  • treats law enforcement as geopolitics
  • treats heads of state as personally accountable
  • treats speed and shock as strategic tools
  • treats norms as optional if they no longer produce deterrence
    From inside the old paradigm, observers say:
    “This is illegal, dangerous, unprecedented, destabilizing.”
    From outside the paradigm, it’s obvious:
    “This just rewrote the rules of hemispheric power.”
    They’re not disagreeing on facts.

They’re operating in different realities.

4. Venezuela as a Boyd-style paradigm shatter

From a Boyd lens, the Venezuela action is not “policy.”
It’s psychological dislocation.

Old paradigm expectation:

  • Dictators are insulated
  • Regimes are abstract entities
  • Accountability is slow, symbolic, diplomatic

New paradigm signal:

  • Leadership is personal
  • Sovereignty is conditional on behavior
  • Criminal-state fusion voids immunity
  • Time-to-consequence just collapsed
    That’s not escalation — that’s model collapse.
    And that’s why analysts are:
  • obsessing over legality
  • ignoring signaling
  • missing second- and third-order effects

They’re doing Ptolemaic math while the planets have already moved.

5. Why the reaction is so emotional (and irrational)

Boyd noted something else most people forget:
Paradigm collapse threatens identity, not just ideas.
For many elites:

  • Their careers were built under the old rules
  • Their moral authority depends on those rules
  • Their expertise becomes obsolete overnight
    So they respond with:
  • moral outrage
  • procedural fixation
  • narrative inflation (“this is the end of democracy”)
  • denial of efficacy (“this won’t work”)
    These are psychological defense mechanisms, not strategic assessments.
    Just like astronomers who knew the math didn’t work —

but kept adding epicycles anyway.

6. Generational lag: why acceptance takes decades

Boyd was brutally honest about this:

  • People deeply invested in a paradigm will not change
  • They reinterpret evidence indefinitely
  • Acceptance only comes when:
  • new actors rise who didn’t build their identity on the old model
  • or the old model catastrophically fails in public
    That’s why:
  • Paradigm shifts look “obvious” in hindsight
  • But feel “unthinkable” in real time

You’re watching that live right now.

7. Why this move is more powerful than it looks

Most people are asking:
“Was this legal?”
“Was this appropriate?”
“Will this cause backlash?”
Boyd would ask:
“What mental models just broke?”
Answer:

  • Cartels’ belief in state protection
  • Regional elites’ belief in untouchability
  • Adversaries’ belief that the U.S. is procedurally paralyzed
  • Allies’ belief that the U.S. won’t act decisively

That’s why this is a paradigm-level event, not a policy tweak.

8. The core Boyd takeaway applied to today

What you’re seeing is this:

  • Old-paradigm thinkers are fighting to preserve the lens
  • New-paradigm actors are changing the environment itself
    And Boyd was clear:
    Those who shape the environment force everyone else into reaction.
    That’s the deepest reason people “don’t get it” yet.
    They’re still calculating perfect circles
    while someone just changed the center of gravity.

Greg Hamilton
January 3, 2026
(20+) Greg Hamilton – Let me frame this explicitly through **John…

I’ve been thinking about the Venezuela situation some. There are some things that are very clear to me.

  • If some Ayatollah declared a top leader of some country, say Israel, U.S., etc., has broken one of its laws of Sharia, can the Ayatollah then be justified in arresting and trying the top leader of Israel or the U.S.?
  • If might makes right at the national level, then there is little reason to pay for the natural resources of other countries, or even the goods of other countries.
  • Vietnam used a disputed justification of self-defense and humanitarian intervention (taken seriously but legally weak) in the invasion of Cambodia in 1978.
  • The vast majority of the people of Venezuela are very pleased with the arrest of their dictator.

With the above and all the obvious conventional issues on the topic as my inputs, I’m left with concluding, this is like someone who murders the guy who raped and murdered their daughter and was set free by the legal system due to a technicality in the process. So, at the individual level the murdering parent is arrested tried and the jury is probably going to convict them of a lesser charge, and they get a couple of years in a relatively comfy prison.

So… what is the expected/proper outcome in this case at the national level? I don’t know how to resolve this question in my model of how world law and politics is “supposed to work”.

Then Hamilton says, “This is an alternate reality. Your models are obsolete.”

I have more thinking to do.

More Guns, Less Crime (again and as always)

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Quote of the Day

For decades we have seen one gun control myth after another used as excuses to restrict our Second Amendment rights. Yet here we are, when those rights are being gradually restored thanks to strategic court victories, when 29 states have adopted permitless carry laws, when more people own guns and more people are legally carrying them for personal protection, and the data shows violent crime involving guns is declining. Looks like we’ve been right all along, and the establishment media essentially is confirming it.

Alan Gottlieb
November 27, 2025
CRIME DOWN, GUN CARRY UP REFLECTS NATIONAL TREND | Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms

More Guns, Less Crime. Or, as I have been saying for over 20 years, Just One Question.

Nearly all the information you get from the mainstream media is wrong it some way. It can be incomplete and misleading, it can be exaggeration, and it can an outright lie. I suspect a significant component of this is that society has created an evolutionary environment for this. Highly emotional information gets attention. Attention brings more money. Boring news providers go out of business.

I don’t know of a solution to this. The only partial mitigation I know of is to get your news from multiple sources. And even then, if the sources are all politically (or whatever “tribe” type) aligned you get amplification of the misinformation rather than correction toward the truth.

Reality is tough. Really tough.

Will They Start Playing Calvinball?

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Quote of the Day

SCOTUS’s current practice of deciding like 50 cases a year may have worked in a system where the lower courts acted in good faith. SCOTUS would decide Bruen, and then lower courts would do their best to faithfully apply it.

Instead, the antigun circuits almost always find a way to rule against the Second Amendment except on the specific issues SCOTUS has decided. The Ninth Circuit is now on its 10th en banc to reverse a pro-2A panel ruling.

Sure, maybe SCOTUS will take the occasional case like Wolford and correct a particularly egregious ruling. But the Ninth Circuit’s antigun majority knows there is no way SCOTUS will grant cert to every antigun ruling, or even a large minority of them. So they’ll keep doing what they are doing, and so what if a few get reversed. Most won’t.

To actually correct this, SCOTUS needs to go back to deciding many more cases each year, or alternatively, issue short and curt summary reversals very liberally.

For example, when the Ninth Circuit (probably) upholds the handgun roster’s MDM and CLI requirements, the Supreme Court shouldn’t need a full cert grant and briefing to explain why that is wrong. A one page per curiam saying there is no historical tradition of such “feature” requirements, and California can’t ban popular handguns, would suffice.

Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X, December 30, 2025

I would be interested to see what would happen if SCOTUS returned a one page per curium within minutes of when one of these outrageous decisions were punted up to them. An automated AI system could easily do it. If the autopen was good enough for Biden, then an AI should be good enough for SCOTUS, right? Would the lower courts continue playing these games? Or would they start Calvinballing it?

I’m inclined to believe we will not get 2nd Amendment justice until people are prosecuted.

Understanding of Current Events (Maybe)

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In war, truth is the first casualty. Hence, it is going to be extremely difficult to know the truth of the current events in Iran and Venezuela. For now, I’m going with the content of these two videos as a first approximation of background material.

The Warmth Comes from the Fire of Gunpowder and/or Ovens

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Quote of the Day

We will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.

Zohran Mamdani
New York City Mayor
January 1, 2026
Bishop Barron rips Mamdani’s ‘warmth of collectivism’ remark: ‘For God’s sake’ | Fox News
Conservatives sound alarm over Zohran Mamdani’s ‘collectivism’ comment | Fox News

Spell checker wanted to correct Mamdani to “Madman”. I wonder if it there is some significance to that.

If you want an economic argument as to why Mamdani’s plans are a really, really, bad idea read The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents-The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2): Hayek, F. A., Caldwell, Bruce, Caldwell, Bruce, Caldwell, Bruce: 9780226320557: Amazon.com: Books

If you want to read the detailed results of a real-world test case of this political philosophy read The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Complete 3 Volumes Collection (Volume 1, 2, 3): Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn: Amazon.com: Books.

I don’t want to read any more about it. I want my underground bunker in Idaho*.

If you follow the X post above, you will find the following means and many more:

The difference between the two:

Ricardo Gomes sums it up for me:

* The night of January 1st, 2026 was the first time I spend the night in my underground bunker in Idaho. It’s not really ready, but for this time of year, it is better than the camping trailer. While it will not be completed, I expect that within a month Barb and I would be comfortable here should the need occur. It is not a minute too soon.