Tag: history

Air Power Idiocy

What do air power advocates, American tax protestors, religious conservatives, and NATO strategists all have in common? The foolish idea that with just a little external assistance, the people will rise up and overthrow their government:

Early this year, Ukrainian officials came to President Volodymyr Zelensky with a risky new plan to end the war with Russia. It would require expanding their bombing campaign to include a set of targets and a class of weapons they had long avoided. In addition to Ukraine’s ongoing strikes against Russian military bases, oil refineries, supply lines, and logistics hubs, the officials wanted to launch waves of AI-enabled drones at Moscow’s airports, hoping to stop international carriers from flying in and out of the Russian capital, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the plan, which has not been previously reported.

In short, they wanted to plan a mass terror attack on Russian airports to completely shut down all civilian flights in and out of Moscow as a way to ramp up pressure and make Russian civilians in the capital city feel the consequences of the war.

It’s remarkable that military planners even entertain these ridiculous notions that never, ever, work. The idea has been around since the 1920s when it was first conceived by an Italian general named Giulio Douhet. It will probably not escape your attention that despite having first access to this strategery, Italy has not won any wars since the publication of The Command of the Air in 1921. Nor has ever it worked anywhere from Germany to Vietnam to Gaza.

Contra the air power theory, bombing tends to cause the people to support the regime in charge and turn to it for protection. It doesn’t ever make them want to surrender to the people bombing them or accede to their wishes.

And in preemptive answer to the obvious rebuttal, Russia isn’t bombing civilian targets in Kiev to turn the Ukrainian people against Zelensky and the Kiev regime. It’s a) payback for Ukraine’s attacks on civilians and b) a warning to the Kiev regime’s NATO supporters.

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The Retreat From Asia

Even those pulling the strings of the Short Fat Trump now understand that Asia is a bridge too far for the US military to even pretend it can contest, and it appears they’re now conceding the region to China.

Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea. These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful. Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I hâve instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises! While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, “No thanks!” Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

It’s only a matter of time before US troops are withdrawn from South Korea and Japan. Which is a good thing, since the fate of South Korea and its dying population has demonstrated that as bad as communism and Jutism may be, and they are very, very bad, Western liberal values and feminism are even worse for a nation.

The USA now has a single-issue foreign policy.

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The Civilizational Metric

Civilization literally lives when you give men more money and dies when you give women more money. Literally. That’s the Natural Law. And it is screaming at us.

A recent study found that giving men a pay raise led them to have more children, while giving women a pay raise led them to have fewer children.

I’ve long said that feminism is the only political philosophy that is materially worse than communism, socialism, and national socialism. It’s essentially the political philosophy that pairs with satanic theology, and it’s not an accident that feminism has led to mass child murder, the construction of transgenderism, and if Clown World survives long enough, even worse.

The good news is that history very clearly teaches that once Clown World reaches a certain point, it gets wiped out so comprehensively that it takes centuries to recover.

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The Daily Machiavelli

Having finished with their collective read of THE GUNS OF MARS, the subscribers of Castalia Library voted on the next Library work to be excerpted daily. The vote went as follows:

  • 16% Pensées
  • 23% History of Florence
  • 23% History of Freedom of Thought
  • 12% De Bello Gallico
  • 27% Discourses on Livy

And so we have begun the daily excerpting of Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius by Niccolò Machiavelli. Today features the introduction, so it’s not too late to join in and read along:

Although the envious nature of men, so prompt to blame and so slow to praise, makes the discovery and introduction of any new principles and systems as dangerous almost as the exploration of unknown seas and continents, yet, animated by that desire which impels me to do what may prove for the common benefit of all, I have resolved to open a new route, which has not yet been followed by any one, and may prove difficult and troublesome, but may also bring me some reward in the approbation of those who will kindly appreciate my efforts.

And if my poor talents, my little experience of the present and insufficient study of the past, should make the result of my labors defective and of little utility, I shall at least have shown the way to others, who will carry out my views with greater ability, eloquence, and judgment, so that if I do not merit praise, I ought at least not to incur censure.

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TRANSLATION: Cádiz

The eighth volume of the Episodios Nacionales, the great historical novel cycle of Spain, Cádiz carries Gabriel Araceli into the besieged island city where Spain’s first constitution is being born, and where a drawing-room intrigue will end in blood on the sand.

It is 1810, and Cádiz is the last free city in Spain. While French cannon fire arcs across the bay and the newly convened Cortes debates sovereignty, freedom of the press, and the abolition of feudal lordships, Gabriel finds himself entangled in a world of tertulias and domestic politics more dangerous than any battlefield. The condesa Amaranta needs his help to recover her secret daughter, Inés, from the household of the formidable doña María de Rumblar, a Catholic absolutist matriarch who has imprisoned the girl behind the walls of a household so rigidly governed it resembles a convent. To reach Inés, Gabriel must navigate a social minefield: the effusive doña Flora, whose speeches are torrents of self-interruption and genuine warmth; the feckless young Count Don Diego, who is supposed to marry Inés for family advantage; and the absurd Don Pedro del Congosto, commander of a militia so magnificently incompetent that its members are named after parrots and peacocks.

At the centre of everything is Lord Gray, a brilliant, melancholic Englishman who delivers dazzling speeches against his own country, joins the beggars at the Carmen convent for the philosophical experience, and quotes Byron while systematically destroying the people around him. Gabriel believes Lord Gray is pursuing Inés. He is wrong. The truth, when it comes, is worse than anything Gabriel has imagined.

The Episodios Nacionales is a cycle of forty-six historical novels tracing the history of Spain from the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 through the Restoration of the 1870s. Written between 1872 and 1912, the cycle is one of the supreme achievements of European fiction — a work that stands with Balzac’s Comédie Humaine and Trollope’s Palliser and Barchester novels as a panoramic portrait of an entire nation across a century of upheaval. This is the first complete English translation of the eighth volume.

CÁDIZ by Benito Pérez Galdós is this week’s new translation. It is the eighth of the first series of the Episodios Nacionales and was translated from the original Spanish by Vox Day. The ebooks have already gone out to the subscribers. It’s now available on Amazon for Kindle, KU, and audiobook. An excerpt is available at Castalia Library.

An Apology

Stephen A. Smith publicly apologized to Kyrie Irving yesterday.

“When it comes to Kyrie Irving, I can’t apologize strongly enough,” Smith said.

The ESPN star admitted he didn’t want to take the vaccine either but did because his job and livelihood could have been threatened. Athletes like Irving, Aaron Rodgers, and Novak Djokovic were ridiculed for refusing.

“I looked at it as being selfish,” Smith said on his show. “And I watched Dr. Fauci on Capitol Hill yesterday. And the person I thought about most was Kyrie Irving.”

Irving refused vaccination at the time and missed 53 games as a member of the Brooklyn Nets under New York City’s vaccine mandate. The Nets banned him for 35 home games before eventually allowing Irving to play on the road. Since Irving missed so many games, the Nets revoked an extension offer valued at over $100 million. Reports suggest that Irving missed out on $300k per game he sat out.

Smith then brought up his own battle with COVID-19 and shared that the virus nearly killed him. The ESPN personality was in the emergency room before New Year’s 2022 with double pneumonia. Smith not only flipped his opinion on Irving but also called him brave for his stance.

“It didn’t make him stubborn or selfish,” Smith said. “It made him brave. “It turns out that no matter what the truth is behind all of this, Kyrie Irving did nobody wrong. We did him wrong. I did him wrong. And for that, I’m sincerely sorry.”

There are a lot of people who are owed apologies. Not me, because I was fortunate in that my immediate family was 100 percent in accord with my absolute rejection of the vaxx and even my friends who got vaxxed were entirely respectful of my

But for all of you who suffered for your refusal to submit to the global psyop, go ahead and take a private mental victory lap. You have been vindicated. You were right all along. You did the right thing. And never again will you feel the same sort of social pressure on you, even when Clown World tries something similar again, because now you know that you not only can stand against it, but you must do so in order to show others that they can too.

And full credit to Stephen A. Smith for being brave enough to do what very, very few public figures are willing to do, and admit in front of everyone that he was wrong.

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Che Cavalo!

In further confirmation that Italy remains Italian.

  • Paolo Maldini and Leonardo have resigned from their FIGC positions following disagreements regarding the selection of Italy’s new head coach
  • The duo’s tenure lasted just 16 days, having been officially appointed on July 11

I’m not going to lie. I was genuinely excited about the possibility of Maldini and Guardiola joining forces to return gli Azzurri to international prominence.

Efforts to name the next head coach encountered difficulties when Carlo Ancelotti and Pep Guardiola, both leading candidates, declined the opportunity. Andrea Pirlo emerged as a subsequent option; however, his candidacy was swiftly dismissed due to his role as a global brand ambassador for Russian betting company Fonbet. This connection posed both moral concerns and legal complications, since advertising gambling is outlawed in Italy. Reports indicate that Giovanni Malagò intervened to veto Pirlo’s appointment, despite opposition from Maldini and Leonardo. The ongoing disagreements on coach selection reportedly intensified strain within the leadership group.

(makes Italianate hand gestures)

Meanwhile, in France…

Zinedine Zidane Announced As France Men’s National Team Manager

This juxtaposition suffices to explain a disturbing amount of European history.

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Those Who Gnaw

From the recently translated and published GERONA by Benito Pérez Galdós.

Political passion, my friends! I know no baser or more contemptible sentiment than this, which drives men to hate their own countrymen with greater fury than the foreign invader. I was appalled to witness the outrages committed against some and the savage invasion of the houses of others. And we may be thankful they escaped with their lives from the hands of that idle, shrieking mob! In a word, the whole affair was among the most degrading things I have seen in my life, and if the Junta Central was worth little, the men who in Seville and afterward in Cádiz gnawed, like restless and parasitic reptiles, at its foundations, do not occupy, for all their bustling and all the various postures they assumed, any visible place in history.

Their smallness makes them vanish in the long perspectives of the past, and their echoless names awaken neither admiration nor rancour. They belong to that common herd which, common as it is, has shaped the destinies of the country from the first revolution to the present day: people without an ideal, who would be lost in the crowd like raindrops in the ocean, if the deplorable political neutrality of those Spaniards who are honest, decent, informed, and patriotic, and who are the majority, did not allow them to act in public life, treating the country as an object of exclusive property given them for their amusement.

The end of empire is always marked by national enervation. We tend to blame television, or video games, or social media, but the truth is that this torpor that permits those Galdós describes as restless and parasitic reptiles to gnaw at the societal foundations as they rule over the placid NPCs has always been a phenomenon of late-stage empire.

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The End of the Boomer Cons

Not being a particularly social individual, I never really got conventions. I went to Minicon once because I had just published Rebel Moon and joined SFWA, and had been invited there. I loved CGDC before it was taken over by the marketing departments and you could still sit down and talk game design and development details for hours with Julian LeFay, John Romero, and Sid Meiers, but in general, I’ve never understood the appeal of consumer-related conventions. It appears the younger generations tend to agree:

For nearly its entire 39-year run, LibertyCon has sold out the same day registration opens. This year, it didn’t. Four days after badges went live, the convention posted an update fans aren’t used to seeing: “In a strange twist of events, there are still a few badges left for LibertyCon 39.”

That single sentence is a meaningful data point for a convention built the way LibertyCon is built. It’s capped by charter, historically at 750 attendees and more recently around 1,000, deliberately kept small so fans can actually sit down with guests rather than get lost in a crowd. It’s held every June in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it leans heavily on Baen Books as its backbone, with the “Baen Roadshow” as a recurring programming staple and a guest list built around Baen’s own stable: David Weber, Larry Correia, David Drake, Timothy Zahn, and others who’ve anchored the convention’s identity for decades. A convention with a hard attendance cap, a loyal fanbase, and one of the most reliable backfill mechanisms in the genre (publisher name recognition) not selling out immediately isn’t a small shift. It’s a convention that has weathered a lot, including the death of its own founder, Timothy “Uncle Timmy” Bolgeo, and a last-minute venue change years ago, still selling out every single time until now.

The reason isn’t a mystery. Baen’s bench of marquee authors is aging, and there isn’t a wave of comparably famous younger names coming up behind them the way there was a decade ago. A convention that leans on its guest list to move tickets needs that list to keep refreshing, and when the same handful of names carry the show every year, the show ages right along with them. Older fans who built LibertyCon’s sellout streak for decades aren’t attending at the same rate they used to either, whether due to health, cost, or simply aging out of convention travel altogether. That’s not a knock on LibertyCon’s organizers, who by every account still run one of the best-managed conventions in the genre. It’s a structural problem no amount of good management fixes on its own.

It’s not a surprise that Baen has struggled post-Jim Baen. Most of the publishing industry is struggling; Castalia would be too if we had relied upon selling traditional hardcovers and paperbacks like everyone has done for decades.

But it’s still sad to see traditions dying, even if you understand the terrible choices that the johnny-come-latelies made thirty years ago that are finally coming home to roost. It’s not the political gatekeeping that has done them in, but it certainly assured their demise given the fact that the winds were against them. For some reason, the more difficult the environmental challenge, the more unreasonable people running these legacy organizations tend to become.

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