Why Trump Failed

Donald Trump’s failure to cross the Rubicon is explained by his reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Former President Donald Trump admitted he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin was only trying to ‘negotiate’ when he sent troops to the Ukraine border and was ‘surprised’ when the Kremlin leader actually invaded the country.

‘I’m surprised — I’m surprised. I thought he was negotiating when he sent his troops to the border. I thought he was negotiating,’ Trump told the Washington Examiner during a Tuesday evening phone interview from his Mar-a-Lago estate. ‘I thought it was a tough way to negotiate but a smart way to negotiate.’

Trump, who seemingly developed a close working relationship with Moscow during his presidency, said Putin has ‘very much changed’ since the pair last worked together.

‘I figured he was going to make a good deal like everybody else does with the United States and the other people they tend to deal with — you know, like every trade deal. We’ve never made a good trade deal until I came along,’ Trump said. ‘And then he went in — and I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed. It’s a very sad thing for the world. He’s very much changed.’

I’ve mentioned this observation before, but Trump’s character has never been demonstrated more clearly than by this comment about Vladimir Putin. Trump’s strength is that he is a legitimately great negotiator. However, as with all successful men, his weaknesses are related to his strengths. Trump is a talker, not a doer. He is a negotiator, not a warrior. He conflates speech with action. He’s not a fighter, and never having been punched in the face or thrown down another man in the judo ring, he doesn’t understand men who are.

Of course he thought Putin was negotiating by mobilizing the Russian Army, threatening an invasion, and issuing an ultimatum, because he thinks everything is a negotiation. Hence his failure to take action after the fraudulent election of 2020; there probably wasn’t any chance of him actually doing so even if the US military could have been relied upon to obey its Commander-in-Chief – something we can’t know either way despite what various people claim – because for him even an approach to the Rubicon would have been a negotiating point rather than the beginning of a military action.

Remember, the Senate was massively surprised when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome, because despite his military successes on the Mediterranean and in Gaul, they knew him to be a skilled politician and negotiator. And negotiators always prefer jaw-jaw to war-war.

So Trump is a negotiator and Putin is a fighter. What, one wonders, is Xi Xinping?

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ASCENDANT on Indiegogo

Ascendant: Star-Spangled Squadron Launches on IndieGoGo

Experience an original 96-page graphic novel set in an all-new universe of iconic superheroes from the #1 bestselling RPG

When firefighter Bill Goddard raced into a blazing building to rescue trapped children, he expected to die. Instead he became something more than human – the nation’s first ascendant. Now known as American Eagle, Bill must assemble a team of other ascended heroes to defend the country from villainous forces intent on wreaking chaos and destruction. But the process of ascension is fraught with peril, and not everyone emerges with their mind and morality unscathed. In America’s hour of need, who will answer his call? And can they do what it takes to protect the nation without sacrificing the values they’ve sworn to uphold? Find out in Ascendant: Star-Spangled Squadron. Heroes must ascend!

Ascendant, the superpowered role-playing game of infinite possibilities, was released on December 14th 2021 on DriveThruRPG. The game immediately soared to the top of the charts, climbing to #1 bestseller on January 4th 2022 and spending a total of 12 weeks on the bestseller list.

Now Ascendant Comics is crowdfunding an electrifying graphic novel, Ascendant: Star-Spangled Squadron, set in the universe of the bestselling RPG. Ascendant: Star-Spangled Squadrontells the origin story of the first generation of superheroes and supervillains. The 96-page graphic novel is being launched on IndieGoGo (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ascendant-star-spangled-squadron) and with the help of supporters, the Star-Spangled Squadron will take flight. Interested fans can check out the trailer for the graphic novel on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB_QMDQKxFk).

“In Star-Spangled Squadron, we are telling not just the origin story of two iconic characters, not just the origin story of the Squadron, but the origin of the setting itself. It’s Day Zero for the Ascendant universe and readers will witness the first ascension of the modern era, the first battle between superhero and supervillain, and the first conflict between rival teams,” explained creator Alexander Macris.

The graphic novel features interior art by Mel Joy San Juan colored by Jay David Ramos and Rohvel Yumul. There are three full-color covers available, by Will Conrad, Jinky Coronado, Mel Joy San Juan, and one cosplay cover featuring model Elisa Albrich as Stiletto. IndieGoGo backers can also select an exclusive foil cover or sketch cover option.

“To bring the universe to life, our art team fused the iconic heroism of the Silver Age with the heavy metal art of the Iron Age to create a unique aesthetic we call ‘Iridium Age’,” said Macris. “It’s heroic, it’s philosophical, it’s sexy, it’s violent. Imagine if Christopher Reeves’ Superman and Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire teamed up to fight Nietzsche.”

Ascendant: Star-Spangled Squadron began crowdfunding at 12 Noon Eastern Time on March 15th 2022. The campaign will last for 30 days. The Early-Bird Special allows backers to pledge to receive all four variant covers for just $85. Other pledge options include a digital comic for $10, a set of trading cards for $20, and an Ultimate Gamer Bundle that includes all of the material for the graphic novel and the accompanying role-playing game. Special comic book and distributor pledges are also available.

For more information, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ascendant-star-spangled-squadron.

Ascendant is one of the popular superhero series on Arktoons. And speaking of which…

THE TUESDAY ARKTOONS

THE AWAKENER Episode 30: Change the World

BOB Episode 13: Face It, You’re Hurting Me

BEN GARRISON Episode 44: Fauci Science

JOSIE’S AWAKENING Episode 4: Shocking Discovery

VEGFOLK FABLES Episode 58: Falling Apart

CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON Episode 46: Home Call

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CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON

The Coming False Flag

We haven’t seen the false flag we were all expecting at the start of the Russian special military operation, but Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean resident in Ukraine, appears to believe that one is imminent and that it will likely involve chemical weapons.

The Americans are planning a false flag operation in Ukraine. the word is that they plan to use
chemical weapons in Ukraine, probably Kharkov where I’m located right now and the word is that they want to use chemical weapons because NATO and the United States have said that chemical weapons are a red line and if anybody uses chemical weapons they will invade.

Now the reason that they’re saying this is because the mainstream media in the United States is claiming that the Ukrainians are winning this war against Russia and that the Russians are just outmatched and out of desperation, the Russians are going to use chemical weapons and that’s why we have to stop them, we have to go in there and be the cavalry. You know, the white hats riding in on our white horses and show those evil Ruskies that chemical weapons are a no-no.

Well, this is a big lie. Right now the Russians are winning this war and winning it decisively. The fact is that the Ukrainian army’s command-and-control system is completely broken. The Ukrainian forces do not have an overall defensive strategy, for all intents and purposes, each unit is on its own. The Russians have successfully surrounded Kiev and Kharkov, the major cities. They’ve also surrounded and are in the process of pacifying Mariupol, so in the end, the Russians are winning. And most important of all, the Russians seem to have completely surrounded, and are currently, in all likelihood, annihilating the 60,000-strong army of the Ukraines which is currently in eastern Ukraine.

Not many people are talking about it but you should pay attention to that, that’s really important, because those 60,000 men represent the cream of the crop of the Ukrainian armed forces and they are
surrounded. Not only are they surrounded, there is no possibility of them being refueled or resupplied so it’s only a matter of time to either overwhelm them, overrun them, or annihilate them. It’s as simple as that….

So if you’re American, you should understand that the media is lying to you. The russians are winning, clearly winning, and I don’t need anybody to report and and tell me that the Russians are winning, I can tell all on my own. You know how? Because every day, I hear the shelling of the Russians and it’s getting closer every day. I’m in the center of Kharkov and I’m telling you every day the Russians are getting closer, so I know that they’re winning….

Those thugs of the Zelensky regime, they want NATO intervention. They’ve been calling for it from day one and if they figure that doing a chemical attack false flag will get NATO in, they will not hesitate, not for a second. So understand what’s going on. I am here to tell you what is going on. The Zelensky regime and different factions in the United States mean to start a false flag so that they can get involved in this war.

A lot of predictions are being made. Most of them will prove to be incorrect. But this one is at least consistent with recent NATO troop movements in Poland and the large military exercise, Operation Cold Response, that began yesterday in Norway.

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High Verbal, Low Math

Steven Hsu explains why so many evolutionary biologists, and other would-be scientists, simply don’t understand the topics or implications of the topics they are attempting to discuss:

I sent the message below to a social scientist I know who (like many, perhaps understandably) is confused about Stephen J. Gould’s status as an evolutionary theorist. Many Gould readers are surprised to learn that his main expertise was the paleontology of snails and that he struggled with higher mathematics. When I first encountered Gould’s essays as a kid, I concluded that there was just no there there. He was all literary flourish and little depth.

Which brings me to an observation I’ve been meaning to write about. It is that high verbal ability (which Gould certainly had) is useful for appearing to be smart, or for winning arguments and impressing other people, but it’s really high math ability that is useful for discovering things about the world — that is, discovering truth or reasoning rigorously. The importance of math ability manifests in two distinct ways:

(1) Powerful (deep) models of Nature (e.g., electrodynamics or evolutionary theory) are themselves mathematical. Most of the incredible progress in our understanding of the universe is just not available to people who do not understand math. For example, we can talk until we are blue in the face about the Uncertainty Principle, but there is no precise understanding without actual equations.

(2) The statistical techniques used to analyze data obtained in a messy, complex world require mathematical ability to practice correctly. In almost all realistic circumstances hypothesis testing is intrinsically mathematical. It is quite easy to fool yourself statistically if you don’t have strong math ability, but rather are simply following cookbook recipes.

High verbal ability is useful for more than just impressing others — it typically implies a certain facility with concepts and relationships between ideas — but high V alone is a dangerous thing. The most confused people I meet in the academy tend to be high V, low (modest) M types.

We see this repeatedly in people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, JF Gariepy, Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, Sargon of Akkad, and Curtis Doolittle, as well as most e-celebrities. They talk and talk and talk in circles in a manner that is superficially convincing to the average intelligence, but an analytical critique of their positions reliably reveals fundamental flaws that render them incorrect, if not nonsensical.

This is because most people don’t have what I think of as “a sense of math”. It doesn’t necessarily mean any higher math training, or even much knowledge of mathematics per se, so much as an instinctive grasp of statistics and mathematical relationships. You don’t actually need much math to understand the basics of statistics and percentages, but you do need a sense of math to immediately know that Ashkenazi Jews in the United States cannot possibly have an average IQ of 115 given the fact that their relatives in Israel do not have IQs nearly two standard deviations below them.

You don’t need to know much about math or DNA to immediately know that the number of genes that are fixed in any given species cannot have been fixed in the time allotted for them to have done so given the fact that we cannot observe species literally morphing before our eyes in real time. You don’t need anything beyond a basic sense of math to immediately understand that religion is not, and has never been, a significant cause of war, much less the primary one.

And you certainly don’t need much math, although a little knowledge of military history is useful, to immediately recognize that claims of 1,000 dead Russians per day in an invasion that has conquered territory at a historically rapid pace are absurd.

The High V Low M scientists tend to be popularizers rather than original thinkers, which is why Steven Gould was always going to be a fraud once he decided to try to make a name for himself as “a very original and great evolutionary theorist.”

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10 to 14 Days

And then it will be all over because the Russian military is exhausted. That’s the current globalist media narrative, anyway.

‘Ukraine has Russia on the run’

Russian forces may only be able to sustain full fighting capacity for another ‘ten to 14’ days, senior UK defence sources indicated last night. By that time they may struggle to make any significant progress – while finding it difficult to hold ground, according to the latest intelligence.

Despite another day in which bombs rained down on Ukrainian cities including Kyiv and Kharkiv, resistance to the onslaught has seen the invasion fall behind schedule, allies of Vladimir Putin admitted for the first time on Monday. And American officials said the ground advance, now in its third week, had largely stalled.

A senior UK source said last night: ‘Ukraine has Russia on the run. It is running out of manpower and running out of energy. As long as we keep pressing they’ve got ten to 14 days before reaching their culminating point. That’s when the strength of Ukraine’s resistance should become greater than Russia’s attacking force.’

Time will tell. I am extremely dubious, so I’m mostly posting this here for the record. We’ll revisit this professional military analysis on March 24 to see how it looks then. I’m anticipating it will look rather similar to the old “14 days to flatten the curve” approach.

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You’re the Insurgent Now

Former service members volunteering to fight the Russians in Ukraine are discovering that war isn’t quite as fun when the other side has air supremacy for a change. This is from a series of Reddit posts purporting to be from a volunteer military veteran in Ukraine:

Yes, I was here today and blown off the top bunk of my bunk bed in the barracks by the first missile. This is where all the foreign legion troops are, the 35 killed were all Ukrainian mostly due to a direct hit on their barracks next to mine. The base is destroyed, the weapons depot destroyed, possibly the end of the legion. About 60 people with their heads on straight including myself left after the attack. They’re sending untrained guys to the front with little ammo and shit AKs and they’re getting killed. The guys who stayed got bombed again in the afternoon and casualties aren’t clear. If you still want to to join them I’m not sure what the process will be since literally all the infrastructure supporting the training/assignments of volunteers is all destroyed. The guys who are there now will all be going to Kyiv and many will die, the legion is totally outgunned and has a few crazy Ukrainian leaders. After the attack one officer wanted to march everyone to Kyiv and fight. Absolute insanity. Stay home.

I didn’t go to Ukraine for the clout. I asked the right questions, deleted my posts, actually bought a plane ticket and brought my ass over. I said in another comment that yes it was 35 Ukrainians killed because their barracks got directly hit. The 180 bullshit is real Russian propaganda. If you think I’m a Russian agent you’re just in denial that the situation is absolutely fucked. Go ahead and join the legion, by all means, but be very aware of how bad Kyiv is going to get and be aware that Russians have warplanes and you will have next to nothing. Be very acceptant of the possibility of death. Those of us who left, including SF operators from multiple countries, are simply risk mitigating. No one wants to die in an unfair fight, and after getting absolutely fucking pummeled by massive cruise missiles today – yeah I kind of want people to think twice before turning their life upside down to go and volunteer.

Like a lot of dudes there have experience and really wanted to shape the battlefield and impact their advance, but ultimately they’re manning frontline positions that are going to get hammered with artillery and airstrikes, buried under rubble and your family never gets your body. That’s when a lot of guys say yeah this isn’t our fight, not like this.

Such are the perils of believing the globalist propaganda factory. These Western volunteers thought they were going to be going on patrols and hunting Russians in the same way they hunted jihadis in Afghanistan and Iraq. A dangerous sport, to be sure, but an activity that is more sport than war nonetheless. But, as they quickly discovered not long after their arrival, they’re not up against an ill-equipped, irregular 4GW insurgency, they’re up against one of the three most formidable professional militaries in the world.

Russia deliberately blew up foreign fighters and arms shipments at a Ukrainian base close to the Polish border on Sunday and has vowed to carry out more strikes in a direct warning to the West. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia’s ministry of defence, said the base at Yavoriv – 12 miles from NATO territory – was struck by ‘long-range, high-precision’ weapons because it was hosting ‘foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons’. He added: ‘The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.’

Putin deliberately targeted Ukraine’s ‘foreign legion’ with strike 12 miles from NATO border, Daily Mail, 14 March 2022

The effectiveness of the Russians can be seen in the way they have effectively destroyed the entire Ukrainian foreign legion with a single missile strike without it ever even having the chance to enter the battle space.

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The Canadian Tea Party

The Canadian Truckers’ Convoy ended up pretty much as I anticipated, effecting zero change despite the media theater as it was easily dismantled by the authorities. So much for the Internet’s armchair logistics experts:

Some mistakes were merely operational. There was no vetting. I gave one person my pseudonym and an invented autobiography, and within hours I was in a boardroom with all the organizers, going through maps, talking about internal weak points, looking at charts, and inputting every important phone number into my contact list. The lack of operational security was astounding.

The grass-roots organizations also meant that no one—yet everyone—was in charge. It was a classic case of “too many chiefs, not enough Indians,” but worse, as if the chiefs had all been drinking mouthwash. So much time was wasted between defective people competing for status and control, including podcasters and lawyers who thought of themselves as serious leaders, that it felt like the Special Olympics of political resistance. Resultantly, there was no distinction between strategy and tactics. Some organizers became so committed to certain small tasks, they could not understand that a bigger picture existed, while at the same time, it was rare for anyone to discuss what success would look like.

Another problem was the lack of quality men: we had some who were brave and others who were sharp, but few who were both. Most damaging of all was that nearly every organizer saw the occupation and their battle with the regime through the lens of a feminine morality, with undue concern about how we would be perceived. There was no understanding of conflict. The organizers couldn’t even fathom the regime extending its power through the judiciary or the financial system, and every time the government used the tools within their control, the organizers would become histrionic, and take comfort in videos of commentary and ranting by political celebrities who supported the convoy.

Somehow, most organizers and demonstrators held two incompatible premises at the same time. They took for granted that the Canadian government had been acting illegally over the past two years, even harming its citizenry for their own gain; and also believed guilelessly that the government would not lie, seize donations, freeze personal finances, use brutal force, or commit any other illegal action regarding the convoy. Every time the government demonstrated its willingness not to “play fair,” there was widespread emotional breakdown among the organizers. Some left fearful for their lives, while others became meritoriously cavalier and tried to get themselves arrested, even if their skillset was irreplaceable. There was an indulgent narcissism in the desire to be arrested for “counselling to commit mischief” and other misdemeanors. Since most organizers were released without charge, there was a sense that you could achieve martyrdom without real sacrifice.

So, as usual, it accomplished nothing except to wake up more regular citizens to the fact that they are not going to be able to vote, protest, posture, or threaten their way out of the neo-liberal world order’s chains. Which is why nothing is likely to change before its eventual, and inevitable, collapse under the weight of its own inversions and internal contradictions.

As a general rule, very few people are moved to act unless they are made sufficiently uncomfortable first. And the societies of the WereWest are literally too fat, well-fed, overstimulated, and drug-addled to be even remotely uncomfortable. But they are fragile and increasingly unstable societies, and their collapse is clearly coming.

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Weekend Arktoons

SHADE Episode 30: Saving Face

SEASONS Episode 39: I Was…

FLYING SPARKS Episode 46: She’s Gone!

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 66: Worth a Shot

QUANTUM MORTIS Episode 40: Who Stands to Gain

VEGFOLK FABLES Episode 57: Unrooted Vegfolk

THE RED TATTOO Episode 5: Prologue

BEN GARRISON CLASSICS Episode 34: Exorcist

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: COMEDY: Episode 40: That Yo-Yo

PAPER DOLL VERONIKA Episode 16: Lend Me Thine Ears

CLASSIC BIBLE TALES Episode 46: Healing of the Paralytic

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SHADE

Foreign Fighters in Ukraine

It’s increasingly clear that the Ukrainians were planning an invasion of the Donbass that was prevented by the Russian special military operation in light of the fact that foreign military contractors were already present, armed, and organized into units in Ukraine weeks before the operation began.

ONE of the first British fighters in Ukraine told yesterday of his ferocious battle with Russian troops at the Battle of Antonov.

Jason, who served two tours of Iraq, told The Sun: “The Ukrainians fought like lions and I’m proud I was alongside them. What Putin is doing is terrorism. He’s bombing kids and families for nothing. He’s a war criminal.”

He flew to Ukraine at the start of last month. He recalled: “When I told my mates they were like, ‘What, are you mad?’. I’m a qualified combat medic and have done seven years working as a private military contractor. I wanted to go and do some good.”

He set up home in Kyiv and linked up with foreign fighters ahead of the invasion. Jason was sleeping when a pal woke him on the morning Putin’s troops and tanks invaded.

He told The Sun: “The world just blew up. You could hear rockets coming over the buildings. In the distance there were bright lights flashing all over the city from the Russian bombardment. It was completely surreal.”

Jason dashed out of his city centre flat in full body armour and carrying an AK-47. His unit quickly joined a detachment of Ukrainian troops heading to defend Hostomel Airport.

The fact that Jason subsequently ran away and is already back in the UK giving interviews to the British media should suffice to indicate how well the war is going for Ukraine. The March 13 report from the Russian Ministry of Defense tends to generally accord with the foreign fighter’s decision to go home.

During the special operation, the Russian armed forces disabled 3,687 military infrastructure facilities of Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday. According to him, 99 aircraft, 128 unmanned aerial vehicles, 1,194 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 121 multiple rocket launchers, 443 field artillery pieces and mortars, 991 units of special military vehicles were destroyed.

Once the dust has settled, it will be interesting to compare the Russian reports with historical US reports and determine which were more accurate at the time of the report. All armies – indeed all soldiers – tend to overreport enemy capabilities and casualties.

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