Dividing and conquering

The attempts to defend the reprehensible, misandric Gillette commercial are just another form of trying to prevent white men from forming a political identity of their own to compete with all the other identity groups striving for power in the West:

When did simply suggesting that people conduct themselves with common decency become enough to spark public outrage? As part of a new campaign against toxic masculinity, Gillette have decided to put some weight behind their 30-year-old ‘the best a man can get’ tagline by putting out an advert that encourages men to be the best people they can be as well. Smart, right? Well, actually, it turns out that they have potentially lost themselves a fair few customers, with men’s rights activists and far right campaigners crying on Twitter over claims of ‘emasculation’, while threatening to never purchase a Gillette razor again.

But, as their advert and accompanying statement so aptly points out, ‘turn on the news today and it’s easy to believe that men are not at their best.’ And, while it may be a bit exploitative of the #MeToo movement, their prompt to their consumers to try to change this seems entirely reasonable. As marketing campaigns go, it’s probably one of the most poignant that we’ve seen in a while. From the handling of the classic ‘boys will be boys’ excuse for misbehaviour to the notion that men should be working to set a new example for the younger generation, the advert’s proposals for a revised understanding of what it means to be a ‘good’ man navigate the thorny issues of gender inequality extremely well.

So, to be frank, if people are offended by the advert, then they are probably part of the problem. Gillette’s campaign isn’t an attack on masculinity or men; it’s simply an attempt to eradicate the toxic behaviours that have become commonplace and assumed as ‘normal’ in our patriarchal society. No one is taking away the beer, the barbeques or whatever else men have seen in the advert that has caused them to have meltdown over razor blades. They’re just telling men to be nice.

Notice how everyone from Jordan Peterson to this Gillette defender are telling white men to be INDIVIDUALS, to refrain from embracing their evil IDENTITY and engaging in any COLLECTIVE attempts to defend themselves and their interests.

This is not an accident. This is not about helping those men. This is about neutering and neutralizing white men. This is about dividing and conquering white men, often with the assistance of foolish white women.

Don’t fall for it.

An onslaught of audiobooks

The good news is that Audible graciously granted our request to make ALL of our audiobooks nonexclusive with them, which means that we can start offering them for sale on the Arkhaven store. This is great because we can sell them in a much higher-quality DRM-free MP4 format, which is both 4x better in audio terms and considerably more flexible in terms of the audiobook readers and audio players that can handle it.

For example, you can simply copy the file onto a USB stick and listen to it in your car.

However, since we have more than 40 audiobooks to convert to our preferred format and our Audio Editor is very busy editing the massive A Throne of Bones audiobook, we could use three volunteer audio interns to help us mass-convert the original audio files into the correct format. If you are a) interested, b) modestly competent technically and c) in possession of a reasonably modern Macintosh computer, please shoot me an email letting me know. If you’re on Windows or Linux, please do not volunteer, as the necessary software is Mac-only.

UPDATE: we now have more volunteers than we required. Thanks to everyone who contacted us. The Audio Editor will be in touch with you shortly.

One problem with the new format that we are currently sorting out is the way in which the iPhone’s walled garden attempts to prevent iPhone users from putting MP4 files on their iPhones. So far, the best alternative we have found is Bookmobile for iOS, which costs $4 in the App Store.

On Android we recommend Voice Audiobook Player, which is free in the Google Play Store. But we recommend that you read our complete post concerning instructions for audio books on the various platforms

Here’s what you need to do in order to play our .mp4 format audio books on different platforms. But first of all: On any platform, do not simply click the link and start listening to it in the browser’s internal player that will launch when you do. It will begin playing the file correctly, but eventually it will choke due to the very large length of the audiobook file. In all platforms, you need to download the file in one way or the other. Remember that the links will expire in a month. You will want to have the file in your own storage by that time.

UPDATE: SJWs Always Lie is now available in audiobook at the Arkhaven store.

There will not be war with China

That’s my assessment. I anticipate that the USA is going to back down and abandon Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China within five years due to the combination of carrier-killing technology and the absence of Neo-Palestinian interests in the South Pacific:

A rare and under-reported tense exchange occurred between US and Chinese military commanders in Beijing on Tuesday. A high level Chinese military official, General Li Zuocheng, told the head of the United States Navy, Admiral John Richardson, in a face to face meeting that Beijing would defend its claim to Taiwan “at any cost”.

“The Taiwan issue is an internal matter of China, concerns China’s fundamental interests and the national feelings of the Chinese people, and no outside interference will be tolerated,” Li Zuocheng said in a statement released by the Ministry of Defense, cited by the AFP.

Admiral John Richardson traveled to China for talks aimed at reducing “risk and miscalculation”.
After a series of recent instances involving US Navy warships making provocative passages through the Taiwan Strait — which the US says is its right according to freedom to navigate international waters, it appears China is going “gloves off” in direct statements challenging US military commanders.

Gen. Zuocheng, who is a powerful member of the Central Military Commission further told the US Navy chief: If anyone wants to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will defend the unity of the motherland at any cost.

Alarmingly this comes after President Xi Jinping provoked an angry rebuke from Taiwan’s pro-independence president when he demanded during a landmark speech on Jan. 2  that Taiwan submit to “reunification” with Beijing.

And in a follow-up speech days after this before military officials, Xi took his belligerent rhetoric one step further by issuing his first military command of 2019: that “all military units must correctly understand major national security and development trends, and strengthen their sense of unexpected hardship, crisis and battle.” Xi had essentially ordered the Chinese military to prepare for war as his first act of 2019.

By contrast, the first act of 2019 on the part of the US Senate was to attempt to pass a law violating the civil rights of the American people to not engage in commerce with Israel. China clearly grasps that the USA is no longer an independent actor capable of defending its own interests, let alone upholding its erstwhile global hegemony, and will not be hesitant to exploit the situation.

Should have brought them home

The USA needs to get its troops out of the Middle East, out of Africa, and out of Europe immediately:

U.S. troops were among those killed in an attack in northern Syria Wednesday — the same day that Vice President Mike Pence claimed ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the attack, “has been defeated.”

The U.S.-led coalition in Syria, Operation Inherent Resolve, said a tweet that “U.S. service members were killed during an explosion while conducting a routine patrol in Syria today.” A U.S. military official also confirmed to CBS News senior national defense correspondent David Martin reports by Kurdish media outlets that at least two Americans were among the dead in the city of Manbij, not far from the Turkish border, after an explosion hit a coalition convoy.

The U.S. military has not said how many Americans were among the bombing victims, but at least one report said as many as four U.S. service members were killed. If true, Martin notes that it would be the single largest loss of U.S. life in Syria since American forces were deployed there in 2015.

The attack comes just weeks after President Trump declared ISIS defeated and said U.S. troops were coming home.

I’ve been reading the history of what many military historians consider the first true guerilla war, the Peninsular War between the occupied Spanish and Portugeuese and the French empire of Napoleon. And one of the remarkable synchronicities between that war and the US wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria is the way in which the imperial power kept thinking that because it was winning all the battles, it was winning the war.

From A History of the Peninsular War, Vol. II by Charles Oman.

The net result of Heudelet’s operations was that the Marshal, at the cost of immobilizing one of his four infantry divisions, obtained a somewhat precarious hold upon the flat country of Entre-Douro-e-Minho. The towns were in his hands, but the Ordenanza had only retired to the hills, and perpetually descended to worry Heudelet’s detachments, and to murder couriers and foraging parties. Meanwhile 4,000 men were wasted for all purposes of offensive action. Vigo, Tuy, and Valenza had all been abandoned, and touch with the army of Galicia had been completely lost.

Even this modest amount of success had been denied to Soult’s second expedition, that which he had sent under Loison towards the Tras-os-Montes. The enemy with whom the French had to deal in this region was Silveira, the same officer who had been defeated between Monterey and Chaves in the early days of March, when the 2nd Corps crossed the Portuguese frontier. He had fled with the wrecks of his force towards Villa Real, at the moment when Soult marched on Braga, and the Marshal had fondly hoped that he was now a negligible quantity in the campaign. This was far from being the case: the moment that Silveira heard that the French had crossed the mountains and marched on Braga, he had rallied his two regular regiments and his masses of Ordenanza, and pounced down on the detachment under Commandant Messager, which Soult had left in garrison at Chaves.

Over and over again, the French armies would defeat the Spanish and Portugeuese armies, only to find themselves under constant low-level attack on the peripheries, as their messengers were murdered, their supplies stolen, and their outposts overrun. The USA can literally never win the wars it is trying to fight, and it is a complete waste of time, men, and material to try and prove otherwise. Because victory requires the acceptance of US rule on the part of the defeated, and that is simply never going to happen in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria.

 Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Mailvox: the inevitability of Brexit

This is an email from a British reader who wants to put the situation in perspective for non-British readers. And remember, the British mainstream media is every bit as unreliable when it comes to reporting the truth as the US mainstream media.

Anyone thinking that we’re inconsistent, or giving up, or will ever give up, is kidding themselves.

We would have been out of the EU a decade ago, but Blair and Cameron broke the principle of candidate selection by local party management, and imposed shortlists of approved candidates from the central party offices. This was an attempt to prevent infighting and create a consistent message to make the parties electable after the disasters of the Foot and Kinnock election attempts in the 80’s and 90’s (Labour Party), and Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard in the 00’s (Conservative Party). The Burkean ideal was shattered by this and therefore the MPs simply do not even reflect the views of the ordinary party members of the Labour Party or the Conservative Party, let alone then ordinary voters. This is why there is a huge disconnect between the referendum result and the views in Westminster.

However, the EU issue, which had resulted in the defenestration of Thatcher to enable the Maastricht Treaty, simply wouldn’t go away – precisely because there was such an establishment consensus on staying in the EU. The party leaders on both sides took the view that they could ignore it because, “where else are our voters going to go?” Well, eventually, after trying almost every other option first to make the traditional Burkean arrangement work, the voters decided to go elsewhere.

May 2014: We voted UKIP as the largest party in the EU elections. Cameron realised the Tories were toast in the general election unless he offered the UKIP voters a reason to return. (Kippers are 2/3 Conservative and 1/3 Labour.) He thought he could promise a referendum and then bargain it away in negotiations with the Liberal Democrats.

May 2015: We voted Cameron a majority so that he couldn’t bargain away the manifesto commitment to an EU referendum. The Remain campaign’s pollsters told them they were going to lose at the start of the campaign by 52-48: “You do have a positive case for staying in the EU, don’t you?”, “Err… no.” Seriously, that’s what the pollster said they replied when he asked them!

June 2016: We voted to leave, by… exactly what was predicted the previous year. The EU is like Hillary – everyone’s opinion was already formed, and publicity campaigns were never going to change anyone’s mind.

June 2017: Theresa May wanted a huge majority, and projections were that she would have had easily enough Conservatives to win last night’s vote. But she got arrogant and blew it by stepping on the 3rd rail of British politics: The Alzheimer’s Tax, as it was dubbed. She demonstrated she couldn’t be trusted and so we ensured that she was hamstrung; precisely to achieve exactly the result of last night.

Of course Brexit was always going to be this way. It was always going to be trench warfare to get out. It was obvious from the EU’s negotiating position on 28 March 2017, the day before Article 50, that there could never be an agreement with the EU. We could never accept those terms. Even if the quisling politicians accepted them, we would simply repudiate them later using the 1970 Treaty of Vienna.

The EU seems to persistently operate under the fantasy that any British government can make commitments about the future. It can’t. The most fundamental principle of the British constitution is that no parliament may bind a future parliament. The EU keeps want us to be bound to unchanging commitments, which is an axiomatic impossibility, because we would later unbind ourselves.

On the matter of EU citizens saying that they don’t trust the British government in the future, well “Why are you even here if you don’t trust us? Because you are indeed talking about a future government that the British would choose.” The EU citizens are a bit like the Brits that move to the USA, and can’t cope with the fact that they do things differently there. We’re not Europe. We have a common law system with fundamentally different concepts of law and the relationship between the citizen and the state. And we drive on the correct side of the road.

If there is another referendum, we’ll vote to get out of the EU in exactly the same numbers. Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow went to Leeds to interview 18-20 year olds who hadn’t voted in 2016, and was astonished to discover they were more adamant about Brexit than the older voters. It is always a false conceit of the left that they are the future, which I guess is why they are now run the world over by a gerontocracy that looks like the Chernenko regime overseeing the May Day parade, such as Pelosi and Corbyn.

Theresa May won’t authorise another referendum. It would open the door to referendums on other topics the progressives want to avoid. How about a referendum on the death penalty, abortion, abolition of the concept of asylum, or any other deplorable topic? How about another Scottish referendum? Sturgeon certainly wants it. That could open the way to an English independence referendum. The Welsh are terrified of that idea. How about a 3rd Brexit referendum? There isn’t going to be another referendum on anything, ever, if the establishment can prevent it.

Even if they manage to stop Brexit for the moment, it will remain the central issue of British politics until we are out of the EU. Nothing else is getting done in government. Brexit occupies 100 percent of government CPU capacity. They can’t wish Brexit away, much as they would like to. If this attempt to leave is stopped, then the electorate will do precisely what Cameron was trying to prevent and abandon the two main parties in order to achieve Brexit.

A prospect that I think would be really hilarious is if we are prevented from leaving, and then a Salvini-Orban grouping takes control of the EU parliament and selection of Junker’s replacement. There will be new commissioners nominated by the governments that have taken power since 2014. I can see British Remain supporters suddenly horrified: “We didn’t mean to stay in THIS EU, we meant to stay in the Merkel-Macron version!”

On a grander level, this is like the 1945 C.S. Lewis novel That Hideous Strength where Britain is covertly conquered by an apparently benign European bureaucracy. But the fact is that the problems are really caused by the Franco-German addiction to empire building on the European continent. We only went to war against Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler because they went empire building in Europe, not because of any unpleasant domestic activities they may have engaged in. Establishing the empire peacefully is still an empire and people are still going to resist. Nationalism is sticking within your own borders. It is the Westphalian solution. It stopped the Thirty Years war. It is the path to peace, stability and prosperity.

Brexit betrayal goes down to defeat

The ever-treasonous Theresa May’s fake Brexit deal went down to historic defeat.

Theresa May suffered an historic landslide defeat in the Commons tonight, losing her Brexit deal by 432 to 202 – a huge majority of 230. She suffered a rebellion of 118 of her MPs – with the group including a raft of former ministers. Tom Pursglove and Eddie Hughes quit as ministerial aides tonight to join the rebels.

It was the biggest Tory rebellion for decades – worse than anything faced by David Cameron, John Major or Margaret Thatcher. The revolt includes more than a third of her entire 317-strong party and was led by ringleaders Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

What May should do is resign now and allow a strong Brexiteer lead Great Britain into a no-deal Brexit. But the EU is trying to sell the idea of a false dichotomy between the rejection of a fake deal and a nonexistent rejection of the referendum.

The EU was built upon the practice of making countries vote until they reached a result that the EU wanted, so this is the exact opposite of a surprise.

The EU has hinted that Brexit should be cancelled after Theresa May’s deal was voted down in the biggest defeat suffered by a Prime Minister in over 100 years. EU Council President Donald Tusk suggested if MPs cannot agree a deal and don’t want to crash out without one, they should consider reversing the historic vote.

While EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned that ‘time is almost up’ as he announced no deal planning will be ramped up in the wake of the defeat.

He made a dash back to Brussels for emergency Brexit meetings as the deal was voted down by 432 votes to 202 – meaning a staggering 230 MPs voted against her.

Mr Tusk said: ‘If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?’

The truth is that many Brits want a no-deal Brexit, because it will save them billions of dollars. It was the second-most popular option in a recent poll. No one gives a damn about clarity. The important thing is to get out of the EU and reclaim British sovereignty. Everything else can be sorted from there.

SJWs kill Derbycon

Even people who desperately want to be considered tolerant, equalitarian, progressive, inclusive, and diverse simply can’t take the constant barrage of pressure to converge more completely anymore.

What we have had to deal with on the back-end the past few years is more than just running a conference and sharing with friends. The conference scene in general changed drastically and small pocket groups focus on outrage and disruption where there is no right answer (regardless of how you respond, it’s wrong), instead of coming together, or making the industry better. There is a small, yet vocal group of people creating negativity, polarization, and disruption, with the primary intent of self-promotion to advance a career, for personal gain, or for more social media followers. Individuals that would have us be judge, jury, and executioner for people they have had issues with outside of the conference that has nothing to do with the conference itself.

Instead of working hard in research, being a positive force in the industry, or sharing their own unique experiences (which makes us better as a whole), they tear others down in order to promote themselves. This isn’t just about DerbyCon, it is present at other conferences as well and it’s getting worse each year. We’ve spoken with a number of conference organizers, and each year it becomes substantially more difficult to host a conference where people can come together in large group settings. It’s not just conferences either. This behavior is happening all over the place on social media, in our industry, targeting people trying to do good. As a community, we add fuel to fire, attack others, and give them a platform in one massive toxic environment. We do this all in fear of repercussions from upsetting others. Until this pattern changes, it will continue to get worse.

This shouldn’t detract from real issues, and believe us, there are _real_ issues that happen. Issues that need to be dealt with when people get in large group settings. As a whole, DerbyCon has far fewer incidents than other conferences that post their statistics, and where conference safety is paramount and the #1 priority. We do listen, we do respond, and we always look to improve and get better.

This year, we had to handle issues that honestly, as an adult, we would never expect to have to handle from other adults. Conferences in general have shifted focus to not upsetting individuals and having to police people’s beliefs, politics, and feelings. Instead of coming to a conference to learn and share, it’s about how loud of a message a person can make about a specific topic, regardless of who they tear down or attempt to destroy. To put it in perspective, we had to deal with an individual that was verbally and mentally abusive to a number of our volunteer staff and security to the point where they were in tears.

This is not what we signed up for.

Admittedly, we had no idea how to handle this person, and in fear of repercussion of removing this person, allowed them to stay at the conference in order to “not upset the masses”. The best we could do was just apologize, for other apologies, and apologize more for another’s actions. This is just one example of many we have had to deal with over the past few years, and each year it becomes increasingly harder for us to handle. We do everything as a conference to ensure the safety, security, and go above and beyond that of others. Maybe that puts us on a different level where something that would normally not be an issue explodes into a catastrophic situation on social media.

Who knows? What we do know is each year it gets harder and harder.

2019 will be our last year of DerbyCon. Please know that this decision was not done in haste, and it was one of the most difficult decisions we have ever had to make in our lives. We looked at hiring third-party crisis management companies to deal with people directly, we looked at having entire companies run the conference where we would become more of the direction and vision, but at the end of the day, that is not why we started DerbyCon. It’s taken a personal toll on our lives, our businesses, and our friends, and it has gotten to the point where we don’t want to manage it anymore.

This is how we win. We are the only ones willing to actually take action against the SJWs. Everyone else is going to simply submit or quit. All these people needed to do was announce a strong anti-SJW policy, throw out the Code of Conduct and the updated Code of Conduct, and carry on with their business. But, they didn’t want to take what they knew would be the inevitable heat.

And now there is a hole in the market for anyone in that particular market to exploit. It’s not my area in any sense of the word, so I’m not interested, but if it’s in your metaphorical neck of the woods, you might want to look into it.

Portrait of a Sigma

People often ask me to provide historical examples of the various ranks in the socio-sexual hierarchy. Alphas are always very easy to find, because history is largely a written account of the doings of the greater Alphas of society. Deltas are too common to escape notice, and Gammas frequently show up wherever disasters have taken place. Sigmas, on the other hand, tend to be much more difficult to notice and identify by virtue of their discomfort and disdain for the trappings of the social hierarchy as well as for the hierarchy itself.

But this example, taken from Volume II of A History of the Peninsular War by Charles Oman, is about as clear-cut as one can hope to find.

The officer who wrecked this part of Napoleon’s plan for the invasion of Portugal was Sir Robert Wilson, one of the most active and capable men in the English army, and one who might have made a great name for himself, had fortune been propitious. But though he served with distinction throughout the Napoleonic war, and won golden opinions in Belgium and Egypt, in Prussia and Poland, no less than in Spain, he never obtained that command on a large scale which would have enabled him to show his full powers. It may seem singular that a man who won love and admiration wherever he went, who was decorated by two emperors for brilliant feats of arms done under their eyes, who was equally popular in the Russian, the Austrian, or the Portuguese camp, who had displayed on a hundred fields his chivalrous daring, his ready ingenuity, and his keen military insight, should fail to achieve greatness.

But Wilson, unhappily for himself, had the defects of his qualities. When acting as a subordinate his independent and self-reliant character was always getting him into trouble with his hierarchical superiors. He was not the man to obey orders which he believed to be dangerous or mistaken: he so frequently ‘thought for himself’ and carried out plans quite different from those which had been imposed upon him, that no commander-in-chief could tolerate him for long. His moves were always clever and generally fortunate, but mere success did not atone for his disobedience in the eyes of his various chiefs, and he never remained for long in the same post. All generals, good and bad, agree in disliking lieutenants who disregard their orders and carry out other schemes—even if they be ingenious and successful ones.

But when trusted with any independent command, and allowed a free hand, Wilson always did well. Not only had he all the talents of an excellent partisan chief, but he was one of those genial leaders who have the power to inspire confidence and enthusiasm in their followers, and are able to get out of them double the work that an ordinary commander can extort. He was in short one of those men who if left to themselves achieve great things, but who when placed in a subordinate position quarrel with their superiors and get sent home in disgrace. From the moment when Beresford assumed command of the Portuguese army his relations with Wilson were one long story of friction and controversy, and Wellesley (though acknowledging his brilliant services) made no attempt to keep him in the Peninsula. He wanted officers who would obey orders, even when they did not understand or approve them, and would not tolerate lieutenants who wished to argue with him.

Notice that the very successful Alpha did not want the Sigma around potentially interfering with his own plans. This was actually a correct decision and demonstrates Wellesley’s excellent management instincts, although ideally he would have kept Wilson on hand for special operations where independent free-lancing was required. And speaking of special operations, notice that the Sigma was not merely independent, but also the innovator on the scene.

It was Wilson who first showed that the new levies of Portugal could do good service in the field. While Silveira and Eben were meeting with nothing but disaster in the Tras-os-Montes and the Entre-Douro-e-Minho, he was conducting a thoroughly successful campaign on the borders of Leon. From January to April, 1809, he, and he alone, protected the eastern frontier of Portugal, and with a mere handful of men kept the enemy at a distance, and finally induced him to draw off and leave Salamanca, just at the moment when Soult’s operations on the Douro were becoming most dangerous. The force at his disposal in January, 1809, consisted of nothing more than his own celebrated ‘Loyal Lusitanian Legion.’ 

 “But couldn’t he have been a gamma,” one can anticipate the inevitable objection. No, most certainly not.

Wilson received from Sir John Cradock the news that he had ordered the British garrison to evacuate Almeida, and to retire on Lisbon, as the whole remaining force in Portugal would probably have to embark in a few days. The new commander-in-chief added that he should advise Wilson to bring off his British officers and depart with the rest, as the Portuguese would be unable to make any head against Bonaparte, and it would be a useless sacrifice to linger in their company and be overwhelmed. This pusillanimous counsel shocked and disgusted Wilson: he called together his subordinates, and found that they agreed with him in considering Cradock’s advice disgraceful. They resolved that they could not desert their Portuguese comrades, and were in honour bound to see the campaign to an end, however black the present outlook might appear.

Losing the next war

I have absolutely no doubt that the US Navy is going to lose the next War in the South Pacific to the Chinese Navy. The Fort investigative report is yet another indicator of this eminently predictable defeat.

Their report documents the routine, almost casual, violations of standing orders on a Fitz bridge that often lacked skippers and executive officers, even during potentially dangerous voyages at night through busy waterways.

The probe exposes how personal distrust led the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, to avoid communicating with the destroyer’s electronic nerve center — the combat information center, or CIC — while the Fitzgerald tried to cross a shipping superhighway.

When Fort walked into the trash-strewn CIC in the wake of the disaster, he was hit with the acrid smell of urine. He saw kettlebells on the floor and bottles filled with pee. Some radar controls didn’t work and he soon discovered crew members who didn’t know how to use them anyway.

Fort found a Voyage Management System that generated more “trouble calls” than any other key piece of electronic navigational equipment. Designed to help watchstanders navigate without paper charts, the VMS station in the skipper’s quarters was broken so sailors cannibalized it for parts to help keep the rickety system working.

Since 2015, the Fitz had lacked a quartermaster chief petty officer, a crucial leader who helps safely navigate a warship and trains its sailors — a shortcoming known to both the destroyer’s squadron and Navy officials in the United States, Fort wrote.

Fort determined that Fitz’s crew was plagued by low morale; overseen by a dysfunctional chiefs mess; and dogged by a bruising tempo of operations in the Japan-based 7th Fleet that left exhausted sailors with little time to train or complete critical certifications.

All the Chinese admirals have to do is wait and allow the political, demographic, and institutional rot to continue to eat away at the USN’s military capabilities until they deem the time right to strike. And they are far from the only observers capable of understanding this; don’t be surprised when Japan and other US allies begin to distance themselves from the declining USA and begin to increasingly turn towards the growing regional power.

Jordan Peterson’s 13th Rule

We discussed Jordan Peterson’s 12 additional rules for life on the Darkstream last night, complete with dual-streaming dual-chats. The Darkstream is now available as a podcast on iTunes as well.

Meanwhile, the cultural war on Western civilization continues apace. Actual headlines from comics media site Bleeding Cool.

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  • Ten Years Ago Today – Marvel Put President Obama in a Spider-Man Comic
  • Marvel’s Age Of X-Man and a Brief History Of Utopian/Dystopian Sexuality