The God-Emperor’s 300

I’m half-amused and half-appalled by all the people declaring themselves off the Trump Train over the signing of the omnibus bill and the bump stock ban. What part of “two steps forward, one step back” do you not understand? What part of “lose the battle but win the war” escapes you? Are you Spartan or potter?

No one has claimed the God-Emperor is perfect. Indeed, as I have repeatedly pointed out, one of his best traits is his ability to admit his mistakes and learn from them. No one is claiming that these moves were intentional 12D underwater chess tactics, as he is clearly dealing with a frontal attack from the Democrat-Republicans in both the House and Senate as well as a number of hidden attacks to his flanks and rear from the Deep State.

Do you really think it is a coincidence that the Playboy and porn star stories are front and center on every media outlet while his daughter-in-law is divorcing his son, Theresa May is trying to start a war with Russia, and the stock market is undergoing daily 400-point swings? Do you seriously believe these things are not related to the God-Emperor taking the scalps of the #1 and #2 at the FBI, firing his Secretary of State, and the recent revelations about Facebook?

And do you not understand what these things represent on the Deep State’s part? They represent desperation. They represent fear. They represent real change and they are the early signs of something important. I thought James Woods put it well in response to ex-CIA director John Brennan’s open threats to the President.

You couldn’t get a toothpick up this guy’s ass with a pound of Vaseline right now. You’re next, swamp rat.

Ask yourself this: why are they behaving in this fashion? It isn’t because they control the God-Emperor. It isn’t because they have broken him. It is because they are afraid of him and what he is in the process of doing.

If you’re off the Trump Train, so be it. Supporting the man is psychologically arduous, because it requires constantly resisting the social pressure to submit to the media narrative. I had my own moment of doubt, not about the God-Emperor, but his Grand Inquisitor, back in July because I could not see what Jeff Sessions was doing or understand why he seemed to be focused entirely on something that I thought was irrelevant. It subsequently turned out that he was not. Of course, the human mind being the self-deceiving instrument that it is, I actually had to look up whatever it was that had me so frustrated with the guy who has methodically taken out one after another of the Deep State’s most strategically situated tools.

In my opinion, the God-Emperor has more than earned our continued confidence, even if he makes mistakes and missteps that are much bigger than simply signing an inevitable bill or allowing an enemy Congress its head. If you don’t have that confidence in the man any longer, then you don’t. So be it; these things are what they are. I’m certainly not going to criticize anyone for it, just as I refused to criticize Scott Adams when he lost his confidence in October 2016. You are free to disembark the train at any time and quietly despair. The rest of us, the God-Emperor’s 300, will fight in the shade.

Democrats to the left. Republicans to the other left.
No friends, no allies, and the Deep State rising.
The God-Emperor stands alone but for his 300.

We may win. We may not.
We will not despair and we will not stop.
Trumpslide 2020!

Spartans, what is your profession?

Mailvox: trade and capital flows

Peter Thiel raised some questions about trade, capital flows, and tariffs at a recent talk at the Economic Club of New York. Specifically, why does capital flow in the opposite direction now than it did in 1900, when slow growing economies like the UK invested in fast growing economies like Russia and Argentina? 

There is something really odd going on in the trade relations… The way you’d expect things to be working in a healthily globalizing world is that capital would flow from the slow growing to the fast growing economies, from the developed to the developing world.  This was the way trade patterns looked in 1900, which was a relatively open, free trade world, where the UK had a current account surplus of 4{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53} of GDP and the capital got exported to invest in Russian railroads or Argentina, or all sorts of other countries that had higher growth rates and promised a higher return on capital.  That’s the way globalization is supposed to look.

Today, it’s quite the opposite, where capital is flowing uphill from China to the US and is the other side of these enormous current account and trade deficits that the United States has. And so, we are exporting $100 billion a year to China, importing $450 billion a year from China. And China, an economy that’s growing at, say, 6.5{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53} a year is investing in an economy that is maybe growing at 3{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53} a year, when the flows should be the other way around.

And so I think that tells you that something is incredibly off. It pushes you to have to ask questions, why it is off?  Why does nobody in China want to buy anything from the US? Why are our goods so undesirable? Or, are there policies that skew things too much towards consumption in the US and more to investment in other places, and should we be rethinking that? Or, are there intellectual property things that are not being enforced? There are a lot of very granular questions that we need to be asking.

Even if free trade is good in theory, and that’s what you want to get to, I think the way you get there is, perhaps, by not being too dogmatic and too doctrinaire.  And if you have people negotiate trade treaties who are doctrinaire about free trade, I always get the sense they won’t do that much work because if you negotiate a good trade treaty, that’s a good thing, and if you negotiate a bad trade treaty that still a good thing because we know that all trade is always good for everybody, in all times, in all places. And so we have to always be careful that free trade orthodoxy not become just a euphemism for the sloppiness or the laziness of the people negotiating these treaties.

Capital chases profit. There is more profit to be made in the US financial sector, which eats up about one-third of all profit in the USA, than there is in the non-financial sectors of other, faster-growing economies. That’s my initial thought, anyhow.

The end of the Republican Party

What, exactly, is the point of it anyhow?

President Donald Trump said he signed the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill into law Friday, despite a veto threat and provisions he says he is “unhappy” about.

The president approved the legislation to fund the government through September for national security reasons, as it authorizes a major increase in military spending that the president supports. Trump criticized the rushed process to pass the more than 2,200-page bill released only Wednesday, saying he would “never sign another bill like this again.”

“As a matter of national security, I’ve signed this omnibus bill,” Trump said at the White House on Friday.

I’m not going to even pretend to try to understand this one. No one cares about politicians or presidents professing to be “unhappy” or vowing that they won’t do what they literally just did again again. Hearing a president say he’ll never sign another spending bill is like hearing a crack addict vow that he’ll never smoke another rock or a serial adulterer promising future faithfulness.

Now, I don’t blame Trump for the spending bill. He didn’t push it. This is on the House Republicans and Paul Ryan, not him. But I will blame him for not forcing Congress to override his veto. Apparently not even President Trump understands that no one buys the “a matter of national security” bullshit anymore.

I’ve never been more proud to not be a Republican.

UPDATE: Look, it’s a mistake. It’s not a betrayal. The winning was NEVER going to be unanimous or uninterrupted. Don’t be like the conservatives and leap to embrace defeat as inevitable simply because ONE battle was unnecessarily lost. Or in this case, unnecessarily lost sooner than it would have been; Trump may have known that the Democrat-Republicans had the necessary votes to override his veto and decided not to waste his time fighting an unwinnable battle.

I think he should have for the sake of morale, but it’s not my call. Regardless, this is not the primary front. That’s my take on it. Be frustrated, be angry, but do not despair and do not give up.

Everyone knows now

The media is affecting shock-horror that the American people are beginning to figure out that even their limited form of democracy is a sham and that the Deep State controls both of their political alternatives. And they should, since it was the media’s job to conceal that fact from everyone.

On Monday, the Monmouth University Polling Institute released the results of a survey that found that “a large bipartisan majority… feel that national policy is being manipulated or directed by a ‘Deep State’ of unelected government officials….

According to the survey:”…6-in-10 Americans (60{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53}) feel that unelected or appointed government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. Just 26{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53} say the right balance of power exists between elected and unelected officials in determining policy. Democrats (59{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53}), Republicans (59{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53}) and independents (62{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53}) agree that appointed officials hold too much sway in the federal government. (“Public Troubled by ‘Deep State”, Monmouth.edu)

The survey appears to confirm that democracy in the United States is largely a sham. Our elected representatives are not the agents of political change, but cogs in a vast bureaucratic machine that operates mainly in the interests of the behemoth corporations and banks. Surprisingly, most Americans have not been taken in by the media’s promotional hoopla about elections and democracy. They have a fairly-decent grasp of how the system works and who ultimately benefits from it. Check it out:

“Few Americans (13{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53}) are very familiar with the term “Deep State;” another 24{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53} are somewhat familiar, while 63{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53} say they are not familiar with this term. However, when the term is described as a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3-in-4 (74{e1e765f6645cfe4995202f72094ad9c88a5cb669127c8020c4b88ace2386bb53}) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington.…Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist.” Belief in the probable existence of a Deep State comes from more than 7-in-10 Americans in each partisan group…”

So while the cable news channels dismiss anyone who believes in the “Deep State” as a conspiracy theorist, it’s clear that the majority of people think that’s how the system really works, that is, “a group of unelected government and military officials…secretly manipulate or direct national policy.”

It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the survey. The data suggest that representative democracy is a largely a fraud, that congressmen and senators are mostly sock-puppets who do the bidding of wealthy powerbrokers, and that the entire system is impervious to the will of the people. These are pretty damning results and a clear indication of how corrupt the system really is.

I’ve known about the Deep State for about 30 years. It used to be that no one believed me, or at least would not admit to believing me, which was one factor in my decision to get out of Dodge. I decided that I would rather live where the corruption was out in the open and well known to everyone than where it was secret, systemic, and operating with complete impunity in the dark. The gap between reality and superficiality was simply more than I could stand to be around, and I suspected that things were eventually going to get pretty damn ugly once hundreds of millions of people discovered that not only their government, but their very way of life, was a sham.

Of course, people have turned out to be both more resilient and more complacent than I ever would have imagined. But it is certainly interesting to have observed one “conspiracy theory” after another go from being mocked to tacitly admitted to common knowledge. I can still remember when believe in the surveillance state and its infrastructure was enough to cause people to label you paranoid.

What the American people will do with this knowledge is still unknown. But whether they choose to stand up for their violated rights or choose technoslavery, at least they will be making an informed decision now.

Conservatives have HAD IT

It’s always so cute when conservatives discover the existence of the bi-factional ruling party and threaten to stop voting for Republicans. Jesse Kelly is very upset about the passage of the omnibus spending bill on Twitter:

This is the first time I’ve thought the GOP will lose the House in the midterms. If Trump signs this #omnibus bill, we’re through. I suspect Trump does not realize how many people have tolerated his antics solely because he was doing conservative things.

Think about this: Obama gets elected in 08. Embarrasses himself and scares the American public into going HEAVY Republican for 6 straight years. We own everything.

Annnnnnd the GOP responds by doing all the same things Obama did. There is one party in DC. It’s the “screw the peasants” party. And I’ve had about enough of it. That’s all.

First, who cares? Since Republicans are part of the bifactional ruling party, as I repeatedly observed more than 10 years ago, why be at all concerned about them retaining power? I’m not. They are part of the problem, not the solution.

Second, perhaps Trump will veto the bill. He certainly should, although he may have more pressing concerns on his agenda at the moment.

Third, this is a conventional political analysis. It doesn’t even begin to account for the possible fallout from the God-Emperor’s ongoing war against the Deep State, which is the most significant factor by far. Due to the potential for tremendous and unexpected consequences from that, don’t put too much credence in the conventional analyses of the midterm elections.

Stay cool, stay calm, have confidence in the God-Emperor, and wait to see what happens. The Deep State is trying to break him. They may, but at this point, I think it is more likely that he will break them.

Consider. To cut through the Russophobia rampant here, Trump decided to make a direct phone call to Vladimir Putin. And in that call, Trump, like Angela Merkel, congratulated Putin on his re-election victory.

Instantly, the briefing paper for the president’s call was leaked to the Post. In bold letters it read, “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.”

Whereupon, the Beltway went ballistic.

How could Trump congratulate Putin, whose election was a sham? Why did he not charge Putin with the Salisbury poisoning? Why did Trump not denounce Putin for interfering with “our democracy”?

Amazing. A disloyal White House staffer betrays his trust and leaks a confidential paper to sabotage the foreign policy of a duly elected president, and he is celebrated in this capital city.

If you wish to see the deep state at work, this is it: anti-Trump journalists using First Amendment immunities to collude with and cover up the identities of bureaucratic snakes out to damage or destroy a president they despise.

UPDATE: There we go. Don’t consider, DO IT! This is not that hard. Build the Wall and Drain the Swamp. If it doesn’t do either of those things, veto it.

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded. 
– Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

The math of trade war

As I predicted, China responds in a measured and mostly symbolic manner, with 128 tariffs affecting less than 2 percent of US exports to China:

China is ‘firing back’ after US announces tariffs on steel and aluminum. The world’s second-largest economy has responded to President Donald Trump’s controversial trade tariffs.

China’s commerce ministry proposed a list of 128 U.S. products as potential retaliation targets, according to a statement on its website posted Friday morning.

The U.S. goods, which had an import value of $3 billion in 2017, include wine, fresh fruit, dried fruit and nuts, steel pipes, modified ethanol, and ginseng, the ministry said. Those products could see a 15 percent duty, while a 25 percent tariff could be imposed on U.S. pork and recycled aluminium goods, according to the statement.

The statement did not go into greater detail. U.S. agricultural products, particularly soybeans, have been flagged as the biggest area of potential retaliation by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration.

Just to keep it simple and understand the most extreme scenario, let’s pretend that these tariffs will be enough to completely kill the US ability to export these goods to China. That is $3 billion removed from GDP that represents 1.7 percent of US exports to China and 0.00148 percent of total US exports. Against that, let’s pretend that the US tariffs were sufficient to entirely shut down the Chinese ability to sell the $60 billion in goods that are affected by them in the USA.

The net means the US economy just grew by $57 billion. A bit more if the domestic goods are more expensive.

See how this works? And notice how the media never explains any of this, or even bothers to try to work out the price elasticity of the tariff-affected products.

Excerpt: Wardogs Inc. #1

From the reviews:

  • The Mercs in this book are hardcore, amoral, just in it for the money. Vivid battles and political intrigue. Well written. The book compares well to David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers, the original book on Sci Fi Mercs. This takes place in the world of Quantum Mortis, where you have super advanced technology, in a universe that resembles city states. And with a fight going on with AI’s. This is a mercenary company, publicly traded with stock options, in that universe. I guess a future version of Black Water.
  • This is what I call military science fiction. I could tell from the first two lines that this book was going to be worth the read! The opening was very strong. 
  • I loved the story and the characters it was non-stop action from beginning to end. I’m hoping to see many more Wardog stories. If you like Drake, Ringo, Carr, or Stirling you should enjoy this book.
  • Very enjoyable. Hopefully more to come in the series soon. Being told from the point of view of a wardog really puts the reader in the action.

An excerpt from Wardogs Inc. #1: Battlesuit Bastards

Four hours later I found myself on a clunky unmarked VTOL aircraft along with the rest of the platoon, heading to parts unknown. The pilot and copilot were in civilian clothes, as were the two guys in cargo. One of them looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. You see a lotta stiffs in this business.

The sun was setting as I looked down over the countryside. We’d been told we had a special bonus contract, but I had no idea what it was. We’d been given heavy rifles, loaded up with armor-piecing rounds, suited up in armor, then sent up the ramp into this shuddering deathtrap of a low-tech flying machine.

After seeing no explanations were forthcoming, I leaned my head back and shut my eyes, exhaustion overcoming my curiosity.

I awakened to Park shaking my shoulder. We were landing. There was a rough bump, then a settling of struts, then the crew popped the doors. I unstrapped, jumped up, and followed the platoon out into the darkness. I pulled on my goggles and looked around. We were in a stretch of tall rolling grass near a highway. Judging by the thermal signatures, we were probably the only people for miles, though I couldn’t see over all the hills. Not even an all-night diner, just empty grassland.

When we were all out and some cargo had been dumped by the crew, the helo took off and left us. In the middle of nowhere.

All eyes were now on Jock.

The sergeant cleared his throat and addressed us. “As you all know by now, you’re on a special mission of utmost importance. We’re out here to–”

“Kill the prince,” a Wardog interrupted. Someone else whistled.

“That crazy Ulimbese general sent us here to kill the prince!”

“Shut up, Cole,” Jock said.

“Yessir,” the man said.

“Bad manners aside, though,” Jock shrugged, “that is our objective.”

There were murmurs around the group. We were mercs. It wasn’t like we wouldn’t shank an enemy in the dark. The emperor must’ve felt the same way and we were the shank. But this was stone cold.

“You will, of course, receive the appropriate bonuses,” Jock said. “Now, we’ve seen the prince and his men. We’ve also seen their vehicles. That’s why we’re here. Right now their convoy is being tracked by drone.” He paused and took out his tablet. “Based on their progress thus far, they’ll be here within the hour.”

He pointed to a bend in the road, “We’re going to set up an ambush in the road here, but as of right now, there is a civilian vehicle on the road roughly ten minutes ahead of the convoy, so we’ll wait for that to pass, then we’ll create an L-shaped ambush just past that bend, with a machine gun team in the road with two teams of our guys in a row along the creek bed. The convoy will enter the kill zone, at which point the machine gun team will commence firing, then the long leg of the L takes them out.”

“Sir, no RPGs?” asked Goodman.

Jock shook his head. “No RPGs this time. Our client requires a decent photo of the deceased, not a splatter painting. Now, I want a fire team a quarter kilometer before the L, right where the hill peaks, in case they manage to turn around or get nervous. This team will also act as our spotters.

“A quarter kilometer beyond the L, I want another machine gun team, just in case they follow SOP and mash the gas and somehow get through our first ambush. We’ll have eight men in the grass keeping rifles along the long leg of the L. You have likely already noted the rifle upgrades, as well as the armor-piercing rounds. No one gets out alive.”

“Understood,” we chorused, then went to establish our positions.

I was between Goodman and Four-eyes. “Hey Falkland,” Goodman said to me. “How come we don’t just have some guys in the road pretending to be a road crew? Hard-hats and a barricade and all that. Maybe a flare. We could get them to slow down, then pow!”

“I dunno,” I said.

“Well, I do,” Four-eyes said. “You do that and they’ll know something is up. Guys that do security for important people would smell that old trick a kilometer away. A group of military-age guys hanging around a barrier in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night? Might as well put up a billboard that says ‘free assassinations ahead.’”

“Oh. That makes sense,” Goodman nodded. “I never got to do this kind of cloak and dagger stuff before.”

“Stick around,” I said. “We also do windows.”

Bomber Bolton for NSA

I am pleased to announce that, effective 4/9/18, @AmbJohnBolton will be my new National Security Advisor. I am very thankful for the service of General H.R. McMaster who has done an outstanding job & will always remain my friend. 
– Donald Trump

Looks like the neocons may be coming back. But, as always, whenever Trump is at the center of the activity, don’t rush to judgment. Given what is going on behind the scenes, this may have nothing to do with Bolton’s “first strike on North Korea and bomb Iran” lunacy.

Then again, that was only three years ago. On the third hand, McMaster was also an aggressive hawk who wanted war with both North Korea and Russia. So, this may be a lateral move.

Hello, fellow Catholics

Now we have a pretty good idea what the response to being pushed out of the circles of power of the Democratic Party will be, at least on the (D) side. They’re going to run (((Hispanic))) and (((Asian))) candidates.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) will stoke speculation that he is considering running for president in 2020 when he makes several stops across Iowa next month.

Garcetti will travel to the Quad Cities in April to deliver a keynote address at the Scott County Democrats’ annual Red, White and Blue Dinner, his political spokesman said.

Later, he will make stops in Altoona, at a Carpenters Union training facility, and Des Moines, where he will take a tour with Mayor Frank Cownie (D). Garcetti will also stop in Waterloo, where his wife Amy has family.

In a statement, Garcetti spokesman Yusef Robb strongly hinted that the second-term Democratic mayor would begin pitching himself in the first-in-the-nation caucus state as an anti-Washington solution.

Don’t be surprised if Garcetti shows up in 2019 with a warchest that will blow away Kamala, Biden, and any other would-be candidates. The only thing that prevents me from identifying him as the Democrats’ candidate for 2020 right now is that it is too soon to tell if he is willing to take the risk of being steamrolled by Trumpslide 2020 or if he’s merely positioning for a 2024 run. My initial take is that he will go all-in for 2020 if the Democrats overperform in the mid-term elections, but he may be taking a card out of the Bill Clinton playbook regardless of how they do.

Why is a mere mayor on the presidential radar? Because, with a name like Garcetti, he might sound like an Italian Catholic, but he’s not.

His mother, Sukey Roth, is of Russian Jewish descent. His maternal grandfather, Harry Roth, who founded the clothing brand Louis Roth & Co., was a Jewish immigrant from Russia. It has also been reported that Garcetti’s family is of Litvak descent.

An anti-Washington solution indeed.

Benny gets bitch-slapped

It’s no secret to the readers here that Ben Shapiro has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to economics. That’s why it’s amusing to see Spencer Morrison kicking him around so easily. The Littlest Chickenhawk knows he’s not in my league, which is why he ran away from debates with me twice, but he clearly didn’t realize the full extent of his ignorance or he would have kept his mouth shut rather than getting steamrolled on the issue of trade and tariffs.

Morrison addresses Shapiro’s inept response to him in a second article that really needs to be read in its entirety to appreciate its contemptuous nature:

Shapiro begins with two rather embarrassing mistakes. First, he misstates the name of this publication. Second, he commits a call to authority fallacy—precisely the error I accused him of last week. Shapiro writes:

The reality is that my arguments on free trade have been supported by every major free market economist in history . . .

This is a tautology: of course most “free market” (read: Austrian School) economists support free trade—just as most American School economists support tariffs, or most labor economists support unions. Does the fact that most Marxist economists support socialism prove that socialism works? No. This is sophistry.

Shapiro is also a hypocrite: did he not make his name by ignoring the so-called “97 percent of climate scientists” who believe climate change is anthropogenic, or the (I imagine) 100 percent of gender studies professors who think biological sex and gender identity are different? Why is Shapiro so willing to ignore “experts” on climate change or feminism, yet treat them like (false) gods when it comes to economics? Shapiro would be wise to remain ever-skeptical, and heed the aphorism: Take not the merchant at his word, but trust only by the skin of his fruit.

Finally, Shapiro says the articles I cited “do not mention tariffs,” and they are therefore irrelevant. This is like saying a paper on Elizabethan England, that never mentions Shakespeare, is irrelevant to studying Shakespeare—really? This is the difference between scholarship and parroting: my sources lend support to a novel conclusion, while Shapiro clearly googled “path-dependency” and cited the first book he could find—a case study of Microsoft.

While the book does discuss path-dependency, it does so explicitly within the context of a single industry, and makes no claim that the findings should be applied between industries. There is a big difference between supporting Microsoft relative to Apple or Google, and supporting America’s entire IT industry relative to foreign competitors. These are different debates, and the nuance is clearly lost on Shapiro….

Shapiro acknowledges that not all industries are of equal value when it comes to economic growth; economic growth depends upon technological development; growth is non-linear in that certain individuals (or industries) generate most of it.

Wait a minute! Shapiro just said that we “cannot tell which sectors will be the most profitable.” Which Ben do we believe? This is a perfect example of domain-specific knowledge in action. When Ben Shapiro has his “businessman” thinking-cap on, he acknowledges that you can tell which industries are most likely to generate economic growth—he even gives us an example. Yet when he has his “economist” thinking-cap on, he denies this categorically. This is what happens when you parrot sources without evaluating them for yourself.

Now that last sentence looks a little familiar, does it not? Perhaps it is merely a coincidence, two parallel observations. Or perhaps not….

Anyhow, it’s obvious that Benny was too busy playing the violin and copying Human Events for his weekly WND column to ever play computer games, or he would understand the basic concept of path dependency that every turn-based Civ or RTS player has had to master. The little guy somehow managed to graduate cum laude from Harvard Law School without ever reaching the level of knowledge possessed by the average computer gamer.