The Last Bluff

Big Serge explains the real reason why the USA cannot afford to provide any Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine:

The basic pattern here is well established. The United States has done what it can to backstop Ukrainian strike capabilities, but it has held them at a level where Ukraine’s damage output falls far short of decisive levels. So long as that is the case, Russia has clearly demonstrated that it will simply eat the punches and retaliate against Ukraine. Hence, when the United States helps Ukraine target Russian oil facilities, it is Ukraine that receives the reprisal, and it is Ukraine which has its natural gas production annihilated as the winter approaches. In a sense, neither side is really trying to deter the other at all. The United States has raised the cost of this war for Russia, but not enough to create any real pressure for Moscow to end the conflict; in response, Russia punishes Ukraine, which is something the United States does not really care about. The result is a sort of geostrategic Picture of Dorian Gray, where the United States vicariously inflicts cathartic damage on Russia, but Ukraine accrues all the soul damage.

In the case of Tomahawks, the risk-reward calculus is just not there. Tomahawks are a strategically invaluable asset that the United States cannot afford to hand out like candy. Even if the launch systems could be provided (highly doubtful), the missiles could not be made available in sufficient quantities to make a difference. The range of the missiles, however, significantly raises the probability of miscalculation or uncontrolled escalation. Ukraine shooting American missiles at energy infrastructure in Belgorod or Rostov is one thing; shooting them at the Kremlin is another thing entirely.

There is, however, another aspect of this which seems to be garnering little attention. The biggest risk of sending Tomahawks is not that the Ukrainians will blow up the Kremlin and start World War Three. The bigger risk is that the Tomahawks are used, and Russia simply moves on after eating the strikes. Tomahawks are arguably one of the last – if not the last – rung in the escalation ladder for the USA. We have rapidly run through the chain of systems that can be given to the AFU, and little remains except a few strike systems like the Tomahawk or the JASSM. Ukraine has generally received everything it has asked for. In the case of Tomahawks, however, the United States is running the most serious risk of all: what if the Russians simply shoot down some of the missiles and eat the rest of the strikes? It’s immaterial whether the Tomahawks damage Russian powerplants or oil refineries. If Tomahawks are delivered and consumed without seriously jarring Russian nerves, the last escalatory card will have been played. If Russia perceives that America has reached the limits of its ability to raise the costs of the war for Russia, it undercuts the entire premise of negotiations. More simply put, Tomahawks are most valuable as an asset to threaten with.

The USA has been relentlessly bluffing, and the Russians have been relentlessly calling those bluffs, since the launch of the Special Military Operation nearly four years ago. There can be little doubt that the Russians will do the same thing if the Tomahawks are deployed against them, and then the US military will be revealed as the paper tiger it is so far outside its zone of influence.

Which, of course, is the one thing the US military cannot afford to happen in light of its global pretensions and asymmetric war with China.

DISCUSS ON SG

Six Years in the Making

The purpose of The Junior Classics is to provide, in ten volumes containing about five thousand pages, a classified collection of tales, stories, and poems, both ancient and modern, suitable for boys and girls of from six to sixteen years of age. The boy or girl who becomes familiar with the charming tales and poems in this collection will have gained a knowledge of literature and history that will be of high value in other school and home work. Here are the real elements of imaginative narration, poetry, and ethics, which should enter into the education of every child.

This collection, carefully used by parents and teachers with due reference to individual tastes and needs, will help many children enjoy good literature. It will inspire them with a love of good reading, which is the best possible result of any elementary education. The child himself should be encouraged to make his own selections from this large and varied collection, the child’s enjoyment being the object in view. A real and lasting interest in literature or in scholarship is only to be developed through the individual’s enjoyment of his mental occupations.

CHARLES ELIOT
PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
1918

We launched the Castalia Junior Classics on October 15, 2019. On October 26, 2025, we completed the interiors and the covers for Volumes 9 and 10. For more information, check out the Library substack.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Dancing Nurses of Covid-19

I never understood what purpose those stupid dancing nurse videos were supposed to serve, nor did I realize how prevalent they were since I wasn’t on Twitter, Tik-tok, or Facebook. But since I was personally acquainted with two nurses during that time, I was aware that they were nonsense and that real nurses working in real hospitals weren’t wasting their time learning choreographed dance routines and performing them for the purposes of their own morale.

Dancing nurses were never about the morale of healthcare workers or stress relief. They were a test, a sorting mechanism, revealing who would accept the contradictions and who would resist them. These videos on TikTok, which appeared simultaneously across all continents while governments declared medical emergencies, represented something unprecedented in the history of propaganda: the authorities showed that they could make populations accept two mutually exclusive realities at the same time.

What we witnessed was not traditional propaganda aimed at persuasion, but something more akin to what abuse experts recognize as gaslighting on a large scale. The psychological mechanism was elegant in its cruelty: it presented citizens with an apparent contradiction—hospitals that were both overcrowded and empty enough for choreographed routines—and then punished them socially for noticing it. Those who pointed out the inconsistency were labeled “conspiracy theorists,” while those who defended the videos unwittingly became pawns in the operation.

This essay explores how this technique fits into the broader context of psychological warfare described by researchers from Paul Linebarger to Michael Hoffman, from Peter Pomerantsev to Annalee Newitz. It examines how the “revelation of the method“ — which shows the audience the manipulation while remaining powerless to resist it — serves to discourage and fragment resistance.

The dancing-nurses were a test for the distortion of reality. Once populations accepted this initial contradiction, they were prepared for more: masks that worked, except when they didn’t, vaccines that prevented transmission until they stopped preventing it, two weeks to “flatten the curve” that ended up being two years. Each accepted absurdity weakened the public’s ability to trust their own observations.

Almost four years later, we can see how this enterprise created precedents that persist. The infrastructure of cognitive control—digital identity systems, social credit mechanisms, curation of reality through algorithmic manipulation—continues to expand…

This technique seems to draw inspiration from what Michael Hoffman calls “method disclosure“ — the practice of cryptocracy revealing its activities in plain sight, knowing that public inaction in the face of such a revelation produces a discouraging effect. The message becomes: “We can show you the contradiction between our words and our actions, and you will do nothing. You will accept both the lie and the evidence of it.” It is a form of ritual humiliation that works not through concealment, but through unabashed display.

The dancing nurses were not trying to convince anyone that the hospitals were functioning normally—they were trying to show that the authorities could make citizens accept two mutually exclusive realities at the same time. It was not simply a matter of controlling information; it was about breaking the public’s trust in their perception of reality.

The lesson of Clown World is this: if it doesn’t make sense, then it is definitely fake and probably gay.

DISCUSS ON SG

Odessa is Next

Col McGregor observes the significance of the recent Russian crossing of the Dnieper River.

The Russians have crossed the Dnieper River. They already have special operations forces and agents on the ground outside of Odessa. They’re now putting together a bridgehead on the west side of the Dnieper River. For all intents and purposes, it’s a bridge head that will be utilized to position forces to cross that river in strength. Now, why would the Russians cross the river, the South Dnieper with large forces? It would be to take Odessa.

Why would you take Odessa? Odessa, if it’s in Russian hands, would stop the flow of many, many arms, equipment, and support into Ukraine from the sea, from the Black Sea. Secondly, it would also landlock Ukraine. In other words, turn this future rump state we call Ukraine into a state with no outlet to the sea, which of course would be very harmful to the future of Ukraine. Now, everybody’s saying, “Oh, no, that will never happen.” No, absolutely. I think it’s going to happen…

So, these things take time, but I think at this point, President Putin has probably signaled to the general
staff, let’s plan on taking Odessa.

In the meantime, it’s being reported that the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, has informed President Putin of the encirclement of 31 Ukrainian battalions in the Donetsk region. That implies that between 7,500 and 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be forced to surrender before the end of November and quite possibly much sooner.

It goes without saying that if the Kiev regime had any concerns for the fate of the Ukrainian people, it would have surrendered already. The fact that it hasn’t, and that it not likely to do so anytime soon, does not bode well for whatever is left of Ukraine in the post-war period. If Russia now feels the time is right to take Odessa, that suggests that the UFA has been weakened to the point that it will not be able to put up much in the way of resistance, given its importance to the Kiev regime.

DISCUSS ON SG

President Trump’s Third Term

Ockham’s Razor suffices to explain why Donald Trump can run for a “third term” as U.S. President in 2028 as well as why the short, fat fake Trump is permitted to continue acting as the president:

In a bold and unapologetic interview with The Economist, Steve Bannon, War Room host and former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, confirmed that a concrete plan is underway to secure the president a third term in 2028.

Dismissing the 22nd Amendment, which limits the presidency to two terms, Bannon emphasized that Trump’s third term is inevitable and essential to “finish the job” of restoring America. “He’s going to get a third term. So Trump ’28. Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people just ought to get accommodated with that,” Bannon stated during the interview with The Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes and deputy editor Ed Carr.

Bannon did not lay out the plan, but said it will be revealed at the appropriate time.

“There’s many different alternatives. At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is. But there’s a plan, and President Trump will be the president in ’28,” Bannon said.

Beddoes responded, “I’m trying to understand the coherence of the things you’ve just told me in the last few minutes. On the one hand, you’ve said the Constitution is fit for purpose. Secondly, you said that President Trump needs another term, even though the 22nd Amendment makes pretty clear that he cannot have another term.”

“Why does it make that clear?” Bannon asked.

“Because he’s in his second term already,” Beddoes said.

First of all, there is no reason for President Trump to “respect the Constitution” considering the myriad of ways that the US federal government fails to respect it in any way, shape, or form and everyone in the world of politics knows that.

Second, the most obvious and logical explanation for Trump being able to serve another term is that despite his three electoral victories, he hasn’t served a second term yet. Which might explain why the white hats are content to let the short fat Trump pretend to be the President until the end of 2026, given the specific wording of the relevant Amendment.

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

Trump can probably prove that he has been elected to the office of the President more than twice already, but on both occasions he was prevented from acting as President “for more than two years of a term” to which he was elected. If he can establish those facts before the Supreme Court, there would be no legal justification to prevent him from a) serving out the last two years of the current term and b) being elected to what would actually be his second term and fourth electoral victory.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Official Record

I think Candace Owens may have just won her defamation lawsuit against “Brigitte Macron”. The individual known as the wife of the French President is officially registered as a man in the tax registry, thereby providing a degree of credibility to Owens’s claims.

Brigitte Macron, the wife of the President of France Emmanuel Macron, is registered as a man in the tax registry. This was reported by the BFM TV channel, citing a representative of the First Lady of France, Tristan Bromet. According to BFM, Brigitte recently discovered that on the French tax website her gender is listed as male, and the name is recorded as Jean-Michel.

Candace notes that the explanation being provided is that the tax registry was hacked, which at first glance is about as convincing as a celebrity claiming their social media account was hacked whenever they drunk-post something that offends people.

The excuse the Elysees palace has concocted is they suspect her account may have been hacked—yet they confess it’s impossible to modify account names so they are unsure how such a hack might have occurred.

While it is, of course, possible that the tax registry account was modified recently, there will be records dating back decades that could not have been changed since the first rumor that “Brigitte” is actually Jean-Michel. That being said, the one thing that might point to it being a recent hack is if there are only references to “Jean-Michel Macron” and none to “Jean-Michel Trogneux”.

I’d be more confident that the tax registry reference was real and conclusive evidence of a real transpiracy if the report cited the full name rather than just the first name. I checked out a few French sites and saw no references to the full name.

« Comme beaucoup de Français, madame Macron a consulté son espace personnel sur le site des impôts, impots.gouv.fr. Elle se connecte et voit qu’il n’est pas écrit Brigitte Macron, mais Jean-Michel dit Brigitte Macron. À ce moment-là, vous êtes totalement surpris », explique-t-il.

“Like many French people, Mrs. Macron checked her personal account on the tax website, impots.gouv.fr. She logged in and saw that it didn’t say Brigitte Macron, but Jean-Michel called Brigitte Macron.

That does sound like a hack if there are no similar references in the system of earlier dates.

DISCUSS ON SG

Cold War 2.0

The strategists of Clown World have belatedly realized that the neocons are not only lunatics, but rank amateurs when it comes to assessing military capabilities and are attempting to establish some sort of Cold War-style detente with China before the asymmetric warfare of the last 25 years goes hot. A 100-page report offers some principles and initiatives conceived to replace the outmoded idea that the US military can simply enforce the will of its masters with regards to the Middle Kingdom. (PDF)

Several broad principles can guide efforts to stabilize intense rivalries

  • Each side accepts that some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship.
  • Each side accepts the essential political legitimacy of the other.
  • In specific issue areas, especially those disputed by the two sides, each side works to develop sets of shared rules, norms, institutions, and other tools that create lasting conditions of a stable modus vivendi within that domain over a specific period (such as three to five years).
  • Each side practices restraint in the development of capabilities explicitly designed to undermine the deterrent and defensive capabilities of the other in ways that would create an existential risk to its homeland.
  • Each side accepts some essential list of characteristics of a shared vision of organizing principles for world politics that can provide at least a baseline for an agreed status quo.
  • There are mechanisms and institutions in place — from long-term personal ties to physical communication links to agreed norms and rules of engagement for crises and risky situations — that help provide a moderating or return-to-stable-equilibrium function.

Six broad-based initiatives can help moderate the intensity of the U.S.-China rivalry

  • Clarify U.S. objectives in the rivalry with language that explicitly rejects absolute versions of victory and accepts the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
  • Reestablish several trusted lines of communication between senior officials.
  • Improve crisis-management practices, links, and agreements between the two sides.
  • Seek specific new agreements — a combination of formal public accords and private understandings — to limit the U.S.-China cyber competition.
  • Declare mutual acceptance of strategic nuclear deterrence and a willingness to forswear technologies and doctrines that would place the other side’s nuclear deterrent at risk.
  • Seek modest cooperative ventures on issues of shared interest or humanitarian concern.

I think it is at least 15 years too late for any sort of meaningful rapprochement between China and the Clown World West, because the Chinese now understand what we have also learned in the interim: there is an ancient and malevolent evil that is not limited by human reason or timeframes that is the motivating force behind Clown World. Any compromise with it will eventually result in submission and destruction.

I am not the only one who is skeptical. Simplicius, too, has serious doubts about the ability of the Western states to change their course, as well as the probability that the Chinese will be convinced to alter their own.

It’s clear that RAND is trying desperately to make US policymakers abandon their obsolete and blinkered world view centered on the idea that any challenger must by its nature represent the selfsame kind of hegemonic exceptionalism cultivated by the US itself for over a century. The US views the entire world as a threat in the same light that a thief mistrusts all those around him—it is past guilt sublimated into national suspicion and Machiavellian subversiveness.

The US, being the pernicious by-blow of the late British Empire, has inherited all the hawkish trappings of its former parent. RAND here attempts to ween the US political culture away from this perpetually adversarial and hostile approach to foreign diplomacy because, as it has become apparent, the people ‘behind the scenes’ have slowly recognized not that confrontation with China will lead to some kind of global war, but rather the much barer reality that the US simply isn’t what it once was, and does not have the sheer overwhelming capability to bully the world’s foremost ascendant power. Thus, this RAND call to action is not—as they would have us believe—some kind of de-escalatory peacenik measure, but rather a desperate attempt to stave off the US from a historically fatal humiliation and geopolitical defeat at the hands of China.

I tend to agree that this attempt at establishing a new detente is nothing more than the desperate flailings of a failing power to avoid its now-inevitable decline and fall.

DISCUSS ON SG

Atheism is Autistic Midwittery

It’s always amusing to see atheists make their rhetorical argumentum ad mentum by appealing to the fact that atheists have higher average intelligence than religious believers. This is where the coinage of the term “midwit” has been useful, because it allows people to easily through the irrelevance of this appeal to a nonexistent, and frankly ludicrious, asserted authority, such as this particular denizen of /pol/.

People with low IQ have PROFOUNDLY STRONG common sense because their brain can’t process complex and fancy ways of thinking. People with high IQs are smart enough to understand complex ideas but see thru the athiest psyop and recognize it as the most midwit position possible. Atheism is literally an entire mindset revolving around DESPERATELY needing people to think you are smart because you ARE smarter than the average but nothing too much above it, creating the world inferiority complex and need to pretend to be smart. Whereas the genius, loves looking stupid and thinks it’s funny when a midwit thinks they’re smarter than them for holding the mindset given to them by MSNBC.

He’s responding to the atheists who are confused by the report that most of the most intelligent people in the world not only believe in God, but are self-professed Christians. Which, of course, is because it is impossible for the average midwit to balance the following facts, all of which are true.

  • Atheists have a higher average intelligence than religious believers.
  • Africans have a lower average intelligence than Europeans or Asians.
  • The 10 countries with the highest percentage of self-identified Christians are in Africa.
  • The man with the highest reported IQ declares himself to be a Christian.
  • PZ Myers was the only New Atheist with an IQ high enough to even get into Mensa.
  • There are 11.4x more 2D+ IQ Christians than atheists.

Interestingly enough, science officially supports my hypothesis that atheism is merely one aspect of autism, as both published studies of which I am aware have failed to falsify the link between a personal profession of atheism and scoring significantly higher on various measures of “Asperger’s” and autism.

Combined with what we know about atheists having slightly higher average intelligence but being underrepresented among the high-IQ population, we can logically conclude that atheism is little more than a common characteristic of autistic midwits.

Speaking of atheists, I didn’t realize that the relative silence of PZ Myers was the result of him being banished by the atheist organizations around the world about ten years ago due to his extremist, violent rhetoric. I never paid much attention to him, and just assumed that he was dead or something.

Atheist Ireland promotes atheism, reason and ethical secularism. Our policies are based on a respect for human rights, upon which we can build a just society based on natural ethical values. We meet with and lobby the Irish government, Irish parliamentary meetings, the media, and international human rights regulatory bodies such as the UN Human Rights Committee, the Council of Europe, and the OSCE. We are proud to work nationally with other human rights and social justice groups, and globally with colleagues in Atheist Alliance International, and the International Campaign Against Blasphemy Laws.

Our shared work in all of these areas, at national and international level, is important for the development of an ethical secular world. This work is undermined by rhetoric that associates atheist and secular advocacy with hateful, violent and defamatory speech. Such rhetoric is also unjust to the individual people who it targets.

Atheist Ireland has previously given PZ Myers public platforms in Ireland, both at the World Atheist Convention in 2011, and at our international conference in 2013 on Empowering Women Through Secularism. We now apologise for doing this. We believe his behaviour is unjust to individuals, increases prejudice against atheists, and is harmful to the promotion of an ethical society based on empathy, fairness, justice and integrity.

I have to admit, I find this excommunication from atheism to be both ironic and extremely amusing in light of PZ’s historical attempts, however improbable they might have been, to place himself in a superior moral and ethical position to religious believers. And remember, of all the New Atheists, he was the smart one!

We really need to consider doing a leatherbound edition of THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST with a retrospective chapter chronicling the decline and fall of the New Atheists.

DISCUSS ON SG

Carriers to the Caribbean

Well, at least one carrier, anyhow:

The Pentagon plans to send the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, marking a major escalation of the Trump administration’s military campaign to target drug smugglers and threaten governments in Latin America. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, which is currently deployed in the Mediterranean, to the Caribbean, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Friday, bringing dozens more fighter and surveillance aircraft, along with other Navy warships that accompany a carrier.

The further away it is from Russia or China, the better. It would be good if the USA would withdraw all of its military forces from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East and concentrate on its own sphere of influence while it still has one.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Consequences of Stupidity

Watching the Vikings implode against a mediocre Chargers team last night would have been painful if I was still capable of feeling anything in that regard. Fortunately, we children of the late, great Bud Grant all have ice in the place where our hearts should be.

The Vikings are in a bind at quarterback.

And they deserve zero sympathy for the dilemma because it is of their own making. This is, so far, a botched situation in which the Vikings sabotaged the Vikings.

The Vikings, you see, could have any of three other quarterbacks starting for them right now and all of them – Sam Darnold, Daniel Jones and Aaron Rodgers – are playing very well elsewhere.

All of them wanted to play this season for the Vikings.

All of them.

I’m absolutely fine with letting Sam Darnold move on to the Seahawks. He’s a good quarterback, but he’s not a great one and he hit his ceiling last year. His price-to-value ratio was just too high. I think, and I thought at the time, that letting an extremely affordable Daniel Jones go instead of telling him that the quarterback job was closed and no competition would be permitted was not only reprehensibly stupid, but indicative of a fundamental problem with whomever was responsible for making that decision.

It was a classic Smart Boy mistake in which no deviation from the plan can be tolerated, a mistake which reliably leads to failure. If I were the Vikings owner, I would fire the individual responsible, because it is a mindset that is very, very unlikely to ever succeed in a world of variables and probabilities.

The Jones mistake was compounded by the Rodgers mistake; who cares if the new star-to-be has to wait a second year before getting his shot, especially when he’s now missed 22 out of the 24 games in his short and thus-far unimpressive career. Rodgers sat for three years himself and Jordan Love sat for three years behind him. Both observably benefitted from their long launch ramps.

The signing of Carson Wentz as a theoretical backup completed the trifecta of stupidity. His decision-making is observably too slow at the NFL level. Sure, the offensive line is terrible, but that means you know you cannot wait to throw the ball! Even an average NFL quarterback would avoid at least half of his sacks and interceptions. And if you know you need two quarterbacks, then why aren’t you signing Jones in the first place?

Now, perhaps JJ McCarthy will show up next week as the second coming of Tom Brady and lead the Vikes to a rout of the Lions, but that’s highly unlikely. And an unnecessary, so-easily avoidable disaster of this magnitude absolutely calls for consequences at the end of the season.

DISCUSS ON SG